Orvieto — Umbria · Italy →Photo: bluejayphoto / iStockAll destinations.
99 places carrying our editorial line — every one of them genuinely undertouristed, every one of them with a named editor and a real local voice.
Patra (Western Greece)
Greece's third city and its sea gateway to Italy, home to the largest carnival in the country.
Trikala
Gateway to Meteora, birthplace of Asclepius, Greece's first "smart city": all three at once, on the rail line through Thessaly.
Castelmezzano
A village glued to the Lucanian Dolomites, where the main road runs out and the path begins.
Cividale del Friuli
Where Julius Caesar's marketplace became Italy's first Lombard duchy: a UNESCO town on an emerald river at the Slovene border.
Orvieto
A flat-topped town of volcanic tufa on the Rome–Florence main line. Most visitors leave by mid-afternoon; stay a night and Orvieto becomes yours.
Pietrapertosa
The highest village in Basilicata, split by a Saracen alley and a Norman castle, twin to Castelmezzano on the opposite cliff.
Ravenna
Eight UNESCO mosaic monuments, Dante's tomb, and a direct train line: the Carinthian Door trunk route ends here, at the western edge of the Po delta.
Salento (interior)
The deep heel of Italy, where a Greek-derived language still lives in a cluster of whitewashed villages and the whole coast empties after August.
Spoleto
An ancient hill town below a papal fortress, joined by a soaring medieval bridge to a sacred wood: one of Umbria's quietest "name" towns outside festival weeks.
Kranj
Slovenia's Prešeren town: a compact medieval promontory above two river canyons, open to visitors by train on the Ljubljana–Villach corridor.
Soča Valley
A turquoise river running south from Triglav, villages that remember a different war, and no fast road in from anywhere.