Syracuse began as an ancient Greek settlement nearly 3,000 years ago, and its beauty has beckoned both travelers and empires for centuries. Even the Roman orator, Cicero, referred to it as 'the greatest Greek city and the most beautiful of all.'
"I was looking around in different Facebook groups, and I got connected to a world schooling Facebook group, and it was all about families who basically travel with their kids, and they teach them through traveling."
Athens is a place you feel, not see. The beauty and soul of the city is laced into the way of life - the small moments and exchanges that happen daily - rather than in immaculately preserved monuments, museums and high streets like those of other European capitals.
Only in Rome can you take your morning espresso with a view of one of the Seven Wonders of the World. There's something kind of glamorous-tongue-in-cheek, even-about casually waking up in a cozy Airbnb and opening your eyes to a site where hundreds of thousands of brave gladiators engaged in combat for over 350 years.
Carina Hedlund has visited Ireland over 30 times since 2011, capturing the warmth of the people she meets in the capital's pubs with her camera.
The drinks scene here has undergone something of a Renaissance, with the number and variety of options across the city blossoming. Of course, there are still the old school stalwarts that adhere to the traditional Italian idea of a bar-envision the quintessential all-day café-bar where you might stand at the counter for a cappuccino in the morning, grab a quick panino at lunchtime, or linger over an aperitivo after work.
Monologue A Walker in Time's Soliloquy originates from a speculative narrative imagining that the Earth has undergone a reset. The project begins with a simple question: if an ancient civilization once existed before this reset, and a monastery had been built within that forgotten world, what architectural form might it have taken?
You can be alone, with a camera in your hand, and you can walk. In that moment, the medium sheds the expectations attached to narrative production. You don't need to have something specific in your mind. You don't need to have in mind that you have to do something with it at some point. This is freedom.
A new listening bar has opened in Walthamstow, bringing Japanese-inspired interiors, a carefully curated sound system and a seriously strong drinks list to the neighbourhood. The Olfa Club offers 27 wines by the glass, with prices starting from a fiver, alongside a mineralised water menu, plus a record player for guests who want to bring their own vinyl or dip into the in-house selection.
The building is composed of stacked and slightly offset volumes, generating a sense of tectonic layering across the elevation. This volumetric strategy introduces rhythm and variation while maintaining a coherent architectural order. Repetition is used as an organizing principle, allowing individual residential units to remain legible within the overall massing while contributing to a unified whole. all images courtesy of Georges Batzios Architects Repetition supports cohesion across the red hills building mass
Belleville has always been a little bit rowdy, whether it meant to be or not. Long before it was folded into Paris in 1860, it existed as its own working-class wine village perched on a hill, slightly removed from the city both geographically and ideologically. In recent years, as Paris's 10th and 11th arrondissements have slid fully into hipster territory, and even the gritty Barbès neighborhood feels increasingly polished, Belleville has held onto its identity with surprising resolve.
If you've walked around any of France's cosmopolitan cities in recent years, you're sure to have come across some stunning murals. Painted onto the side of buildings, in hidden corners, and just about anywhere an artist can paint, street art is booming. We're not talking old-school graffiti here, hastily sprayed names on walls, and anti-social stuff like that. Today's street art is commissioned by city or town councils and created by prominent street artists from around the globe says Suzanne Pearson.
The key find is a stretch of pavement made of slabs of Montjuic stone (rock extracted from the Montjuic mountain that overlooks Barcelona and has been the source of building material and infrastructure for the area since the pre-Roman Iron Age). It dates to between 15 and 10 B.C., the earliest founding years of the Roman city. It is made of precisely cut rectangular blocks, the largest of which are 1.48 long by 1.18 meters wide (approximately 5 by 4 feet).
At the end of last year, XOYO (along with other London venue The Camden Assembly) was acquired by the newly formed Propaganda Independent Venues group, run by Propaganda founder Dan Ickowitz-Seidler and TEG founder Richard Buck. By acquiring the Shoreditch club, the group wanted to help it "thrive under independent ownership and become a cultural hub for the area, offering opportunities and support to local artists and businesses".
The city is remarkably walkable - there will be no need to take public transit or taxis once you've dropped your bags at your hotel - but there are a few key things to know when visiting Skopje, including the best places to get rakija, the historical sites that'll help you understand the country better and where to find the best speakeasy-adjacent casinos.