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.
Aubusson
Six centuries of European tapestry-weaving in a small Creuse river town: a near-dead craft brought back to working life as UNESCO intangible heritage.
Saint-Junien
France's glove town: couture leather cut by hand beside the Vienne, a Romanesque collegiate church, Corot's riverbank — and very few other visitors.
The Aubrac
A high basalt plateau where Aubrac herds still walk up to summer pasture each May, past burons, aligot pots and the Le Puy Camino.
Pannonhalma
Benedictines have kept the hours on this hill since 996 — basilica, school, winery and lavender rows run to the same bells, and day-trippers leave by dusk.
Őrség
Hungary's far-western "guard" country: dispersed hilltop hamlets, a living pottery tradition, pumpkin-seed oil, and a medieval church full of frescoes.
Aliano
The village on the edge of the lunar calanchi where Carlo Levi served his exile, and where he chose to be buried.
Tratturo Magno
Italy's greatest droving road: 244 km of grass highway from L'Aquila to Foggia, anchored at Castel del Monte, shepherd capital of the Gran Sasso.
Kashubia (Kaszuby)
A living language island in the Pomeranian lake hills, where Kashubian is Poland's only recognised regional language and the lakes are called Switzerland.
Suwalszczyzna
Poland's wild north-east: the deepest lake in Central Europe, a glacial landscape park and the lost Yotvingian borderland, reached by Rail Baltica.
Horezu
The Oltenian market town where the rooster plate is still thrown, horned and painted in family yards — with Brâncoveanu's finest monastery 3 km away.
Maramureș
Romania's living peasant north: UNESCO wooden churches, carved gates, the painted Merry Cemetery, and a forestry steam train up the Vaser valley.
Banská Štiavnica
A UNESCO silver-mining town in a collapsed volcano, with Europe's old mining university, a Baroque Calvary on the hill and a ring of man-made lakes.
Špania Dolina
A copper-mining village of 240 people above Banská Bystrica, where the miners' wives made bobbin lace — and the lace is still taught.