Rosslyn Chapel already had 30,000 visitors a year before Dan Brown used it in his mystical adventure novel the Da Vinci Code in 2003. Numbers rose, and then escalated massively after the 2006 movie version showed Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou searching for secrets there. The church near Edinburgh, Scotland was overflowing with tourists in 2006 [more...]
If you’re on a short visit to Edinburgh, go directly to the Old Town to see the headline historic sights. This area is the traditional heart of the city, clustered round the Royal Mile: the street that leads from the Castle at the top to Holyrood Palace at the bottom. You can’t see much of [more...]
The Alhambra in Granada, Spain is a magnificent complex of palaces and gardens created for the medieval rulers of Andalucia. You might not expect to book a hotel room in one of the ancient buildings of this exceptional “world heritage” site, where visitor numbers are strictly controlled. And yet you can. Spain has a national network [more...]
Castle Rock was chosen centuries ago for a secure hilltop fort. Buildings, walls and a moat were added over the years as it developed into Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh’s most popular destination for tourists. Enemies couldn’t get up to it easily and they couldn’t tunnel their way in. Its foundations are solid. It’s an ex-volcano of hard [more...]
According to the 5th-century BC Greek historian Herodotus, who stated that he had seen the building, the Egyptian Labyrinth was a vast structure on the shores of a large lake located seven days’ journey up the Nile from the Pyramids at Giza. Herodotus presents the building as a marvel or wonder (thaumata) that eclipsed the Pyramids [more...]
The story of the Library of Alexandria has grown into one of the great legends of the ages. The destruction of the library has been attributed to most every faction and ruler of ancient times. This has been done, not for the purpose of telling the history of that institution, but mostly as political slander. [more...]