Created for island travelers

A steep red house sits on a cliff on the eastern side of Capri, cut off from roads and reachable only on foot or by boat. It looks like nothing else on the island, and …

A road near Morondava runs past some of Madagascar’s strangest trees. Their trunks shoot straight up, then end in a tangle of thin branches at the very top. From a distance, the shape looks like …

From the far shore of Lake Galvė, Trakai Island Castle looks like a fairy tale in red brick. A medieval military engineer, however, would have read the same view very differently, because one of the …

Manhattan is an island. Everyone knows that. Yet one small neighborhood at its northern edge is officially part of Manhattan. And it is not on the island at all. This page contains affiliate links, which …

On the eastern side of Capri, a huge stone arch stands on a clifftop overlooking the sea, framing a view of blue water and rock. Unlike most of the island’s famous sights, nobody built it. …

According to a Capri legend, the island’s first perfume was a happy accident. In 1380, the prior of the Certosa di San Giacomo, a monastery on Capri, heard that Queen Joan I of Naples was …

In the late 19th century, a Swedish physician named Axel Munthe fell in love with Anacapri. He bought a small house and vineyard, plus a ruined chapel, high above the sea, and spent years turning …

Tomato, mozzarella and basil: the caprese salad, known in Italian as insalata caprese, has only three main ingredients, and together they show the colours of the Italian flag. This page contains affiliate links, which may …

Capri has two main towns, and a mountain stands between them. This page contains affiliate links, which may earn us a small commission. Monte Solaro, at almost 600 metres, is the island’s highest point. Its …

Via Krupp is one of the best-known landmarks on Capri. It is a narrow path that twists down a cliff in tight hairpin bends. It exists because one wealthy visitor wanted an easier way to …

The Faraglioni are three tall rocks that rise straight out of the sea off Capri‘s coast. They appear on countless postcards. Fewer people know that the rocks are home to a lizard found nowhere else …

Around AD 27, the Roman Emperor Tiberius left Rome and moved to Capri. He stayed on the island for roughly the last ten years of his life. This page contains affiliate links, which may earn …

The water inside the Blue Grotto on Capri looks as if it is lit from below. There are no lamps and no special effects. The glow is natural, and it comes from the shape of …

The Corsican nuthatch is a tiny bird, about 12 centimetres long. Corsica is its only home. No other nuthatch lives on the island, and this species lives nowhere else in the world. This page contains …

The old town of Bonifacio stands at the southern tip of Corsica. It sits on top of white limestone cliffs. In places, the cliffs rise up to 100 metres above the sea. This page contains …

In the late 1880s, two of Europe’s most ambitious structures rose at the same time. In Paris, workers assembled the Eiffel Tower from wrought iron, a material engineers understood well and trusted completely. In Scotland, …

Researchers visiting a remote rainforest village in northeastern Madagascar found it empty. Houses stood rotting under the forest canopy. More than a hundred people had once lived there. Locals told the scientists that the residents …

Most people link rice with Asia. Madagascar breaks that rule. This island off the coast of southeast Africa is one of the biggest rice eaters in the world. This page contains affiliate links, which may …

The Westman Islands sit off the south coast of Iceland, a scattered archipelago of around 15 islands. Only one, Heimaey, has permanent residents, fewer than 4,500 of them. Every spring, more than a million Atlantic …

Ask anyone who walks the same stretch of coast in Scotland, or anywhere else in Britain, and they will tell you the same thing. Some years the shallows are completely empty. Other years the tide …