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Romantic Europe — The places that stir the imagination

Some places are beautiful; a few are unforgettable. Romantic Europe gathers the corners of the continent that have inspired poets, painters, and travellers for centuries — and still do. These are the landscapes you arrive at slightly nervous, half-afraid they can't live up to the picture in your head, and that somehow do.

Some are about silhouette and drama. Mont-Saint-Michel rises from its tidal bay like something dreamed rather than built; Kronborg Castle stands where the Baltic meets the North Sea, the Elsinore of Hamlet.

Others are medieval towns where time seems to have stopped. Bruges, all canals and Gothic silence; San Gimignano with its fourteen surviving towers; Český Krumlov coiled within a bend of the Vltava; Sighișoara glowing amber in the Transylvanian fog; and Vilnius, the Baroque secret of the Baltic, still happily unpackaged for mass tourism.

Then there are the valleys and coasts. The Amalfi Coast, chaos and beauty in equal measure; the Douro Valley, the world's oldest demarcated wine region, turning copper in autumn; the Wachau Valley along the Danube, best drifted through by boat past blossoming orchards; and the Upper Middle Rhine Valley, castle after castle sliding past the slow ferry.

And some are pure story and myth. Verona, where Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet; Sintra, where Portuguese royalty came to dream among palaces in Willy-Wonka colours; Pafos in Cyprus, the mythological birthplace of Aphrodite; and the Painted Monasteries of Moldavia, frescoed inside and out in a blue that five centuries of winters have barely faded.

Fifteen sites, all inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Start your own List → Open de Bucket List