Italy's answer to Versailles — 1,200 rooms and a 3 km garden of cascades, used as a Star Wars palace
The capital of Sicilian Baroque — a honey-gold town rebuilt in golden stone after a 1693 earthquake
Three colossal Doric temples standing almost intact after 2,500 years, south of the Amalfi Coast
Europe's first planned Renaissance city — a moated castle, bicycles everywhere, and the Este legacy
St Francis's pink-stone hill town, crowned by a basilica frescoed by Giotto
Sardinia's mysterious Bronze Age stone tower-fortress — the finest of the island's 7,000 nuraghi
Palladio's home town — the architect who reshaped Western buildings, from villas to the US Capitol
The "medieval Manhattan" — a Tuscan hill town bristling with stone tower-houses, 14 still standing
Explore Carcassonne, a fortified medieval city in southern France. Walk the double ring of ramparts of the Cité de Carcassonne (a UNESCO World Heritage site with 52 towers), admire the Basilica of Saints Nazarius and Celsus (known for its 12th-century stained glass and Gothic choir), and cross the Pont Vieux (a 14th-century stone bridge offering panoramic views of the city).
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