Tom Royce 
Montefalco sits on a low ridge in the middle of Umbria, high enough that the valley opens every way and small enough that you can walk the whole centro without turning it into a project. Locals still call it the balcony of Umbria. The name makes more sense once you’ve been inside San Francesco and … Read more
Berliners clock Cottbus as a stop on the way to the Spreewald, or skip it for Dresden. I get off at the Hauptbahnhof and walk toward the Spree instead. Cottbus — Chóśebuz in Lower Sorbian — sits in Lower Lusatia with bilingual street signs, a compact old town, and Branitz Park, where Prince Hermann von … Read more
People arrive in Porto-Vecchio already pointed at white sand. Palombaggia, Santa Giulia, pine shade, the turquoise shelf that looks invented for a magazine cover. Fair. Those beaches earn their reputation. The version of town I keep starts lower and stranger: old salt pans under the granite haute ville, pink birds on still water when the … Read more
Most people meet Capri at Marina Grande, then get funneled up to the Piazzetta like luggage on a belt. The square is pretty. It is also a holding pen. I do better when I leave the lower town’s shop circuit early and ride the bus up the switchbacks to Anacapri. Ordinary doors up there. And … Read more
Travemünde is Lübeck’s Baltic mouth, not Lübeck’s Altstadt. The brick-Gothic skyline sits twenty kilometres inland. Out here the Trave opens into Lübeck Bay, freighters and Scandinavia ferries slide past the promenade, and a small foot ferry still stitches the town side to the Priwall peninsula. Most day-trippers treat the place as beach plus ice cream. … Read more
Most Sachsen day trips jump from Dresden’s skyline straight to the Bastei and treat Pirna as a train stop. I reverse that. Bags go down near Am Markt. Then I walk to the Elbe steamer pier, turn back toward the gables Canaletto painted, and only climb to Schloss Sonnenstein after the river has set the … Read more