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.
Aldeias do Xisto
A network of 27 restored schist villages in interior Portugal: grey-brown stone, slate roofs and river beaches, rebuilt to reverse rural depopulation.
São Brás de Alportel
Ten kilometres above the Algarve's busiest beaches, a plain working town that once corked half the world's wine — and still smells faintly of boiled bark.
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.
Idrija
Five centuries of mercury and four of lace. When the mine closed in 1995, the town learned how to live on without pretending it never happened.
Laško
The Slovenian beer-and-thermal-water town: Heineken's largest Slovenian brewery, a 35°C mineral spring, the Pivo Cvetje festival every July.