The Old World,
Still the Best
in the World

Paris at 8am before the tourists, Rome's Trastevere on a Sunday morning, Vienna's Naschmarkt on a Saturday — the great European capitals reveal their true character in the hours before and after peak tourist activity. Stay in a neighbourhood rather than a hotel district; shop at the local market; eat where the locals eat. The quality of ordinary life that these cities maintain — the café, the square, the butcher, the boulangerie — is irreplaceable and cannot be experienced on a bus tour.

The German and Austrian Christmas market tradition — Weihnachtsmarkt — is Europe's finest seasonal event. Nuremberg's Christkindlesmarkt, Cologne's Cathedral market, Vienna's Rathausplatz, Salzburg's Domplatz, and Strasbourg's Marché de Noël (the oldest in France, since 1570) transform city squares from late November through December 24 with mulled wine, handcraft stalls, and a quality of festive atmosphere that has no equivalent anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere. The Central European Christmas market circuit — Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Prague, Dresden — is one of the finest 10-day European itineraries available at any time of year.

The Greek, Croatian, and Italian island ferry networks are among the great pleasures of European travel — boarding a ferry at Piraeus at dusk and watching the lights of Athens recede as the Aegean opens ahead; arriving at Hvar in the morning with the Dalmatian coast gleaming; the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily, the Cyclades' blue-domed villages. Island-hopping is uniquely slow, pleasurable travel that rewards patience and unplanned diversions.

The aurora borealis — visible from Iceland, northern Norway (Tromsø, Lofoten), northern Finland, and northern Sweden between September and April — is Europe's single most dramatic natural experience. The combination of science (charged solar particles interacting with Earth's magnetic field) and visual spectacle (dancing curtains of green, purple, and white across the full sky) is unlike anything else in the natural world. Iceland's Ring Road and Norway's Lofoten Islands are the two finest aurora destinations.

The Louvre (Paris), the Uffizi (Florence), the Prado (Madrid), the British Museum (London), the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna), the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), the Acropolis Museum (Athens), the Hermitage (St Petersburg) — Europe's art collections are the accumulated acquisitions of empires, city-states, and royal houses over 500 years. Pre-book timed-entry tickets for all major museums 4–8 weeks ahead; the Uffizi, Vatican Museums, and Versailles without advance tickets in summer means a queue of 2–4 hours.

Vienna's Staatsoper, Vienna Philharmonic at the Musikverein, and the Wiener Konzerthaus are among the world's great live music venues — and standing tickets to the Staatsoper cost €5–10, available at the box office 80 minutes before curtain. Salzburg's Mozarteum, the Festspielhaus, and the Felsenreitschule (a theatre carved into a cliff face) stage the Salzburg Festival each August — the most prestigious classical music festival in the world. Edinburgh's Festival Fringe and the Bayreuth Wagner Festival complete Europe's unmatched live performance programme.

Dubrovnik's 14th-century walls (2km circuit, sea on three sides), Tallinn's remarkably intact medieval old town (Estonia — the most complete medieval streetscape in Europe outside of San Marino), Rhodes' fortified city of the Knights of St John, Rothenburg ob der Tauber's perfectly preserved medieval German town, and Avignon's papal palace city walls. Europe's walled medieval cities are among its most evocative physical environments — the experience of walking walls built in the 13th century with contemporary city life continuing inside them is uniquely European.

The Scottish Highlands are Europe's last genuinely wild landscape — the 500 Road (NC500) traces 500 miles of coastline around the north of Scotland, from Inverness past Cape Wrath and down the west coast to Glasgow. Glen Coe's U-shaped glacial valley, Ben Nevis (Britain's highest peak), the Fairy Pools on the Isle of Skye, and Eilean Donan Castle above Loch Duich have a theatrical grandeur that Scotland's weather — perpetually uncertain, occasionally violent, often breathtaking in its light — makes uniquely their own.