The Phoenician city that invented purple dye, a Roman hippodrome and beaches on a peninsula.
The base for the ATM cave with its Maya skeletons, Xunantunich and jungle lodges.
Rosewater distilleries, the Fin garden and merchant houses with wind towers on the desert edge.
Niemeyer's Pampulha church, the bar capital of Brazil and the Inhotim art park nearby.
The city of saints: blue-tiled Sufi shrines and the hottest summers in the subcontinent.
Taiwan's old capital: Dutch forts, hundreds of temples and the best street food on the island.
A Bai walled town between Erhai lake and the Cangshan mountains, the backpacker capital of Yunnan.
Carved wooden houses of the Siberian merchants and Decembrist exiles, an hour from Lake Baikal.
The end of the Trans-Siberian, a hilly Pacific port with cable-stayed bridges and Korean-Russian food.
A golden sandstone fort still lived in, and camel safaris into the Thar desert dunes.
The car-free island of Gulangyu with its colonial villas and pianos, and the Fujian tea houses.
The floating markets of the Mekong Delta at dawn, boats selling fruit under a pole that shows what they sell.
The Tamil north, a Dutch fort, the Nallur Kandaswamy temple and the crab curry.
'Little England' at 1,900 metres: tea estates, a golf course and a post office from 1894.
The illuminated Maharaja palace, the Dasara festival and the sandalwood and silk of the old bazaars.
The eight-kilometre underground river through a cave and the capital of Palawan.
The city of trees in Tohoku, Date Masamune's castle hill, the Tanabata festival and gyutan beef tongue.
The summer capital in the pine-covered Cordillera, a night market and strawberry farms.
The Savitsky museum, a hidden collection of banned Soviet avant-garde art in the Karakalpak desert.
The blue city under the Mehrangarh fort, the biggest and most dramatic in Rajasthan.
The largest city north of the Arctic Circle, the nuclear icebreaker Lenin and forty days of polar night.
The Bridge on the River Kwai, the Death Railway to Hellfire Pass and the Erawan waterfalls.
The royal family's seaside resort since the 1920s, with a teak palace, night markets and a long beach.
The first Thai kingdomโs capital: lotus ponds and walking Buddhas in a historical park best seen by bicycle.
Tsingtao beer in plastic bags, German colonial villas and beaches on the Yellow Sea.
A valley town of 762 curves from Chiang Mai, hot springs, a canyon and a slow backpacker scene.
The causeway city facing Singapore, Legoland Malaysia and an old town being rediscovered.
Russia's oldest city, the 11th-century St Sophia and the birch-bark letters of a medieval republic.
The Maratha capital and student city, Shaniwar Wada and the Osho ashram, two hours from Mumbai.
Sumatra's capital, the Maimun Palace and the gateway to Lake Toba and the Bukit Lawang orangutans.
Infobox
