On the southern peninsula of Sulawesi live the Bugis, one of the great seafaring peoples of Indonesia, famed as sailors, shipbuilders, and traders whose wooden schooners ranged across the archipelago

A mound in central Bulgaria records over 3,000 years of continuous village life, and gives its name to the chronology of the Balkans.

Source: Pixabay Before it was a mosque, Hagia Sophia was the crowning achievement of Byzantine architecture and the spiritual centre of the Eastern Roman Empire. Built in the sixth century

Source: Pixabay For many people, Santiago de Compostela is not just a place but a journey – the end of the Camino de Santiago, the Way of Saint James. This

In the middle of the great river Tagus, in central Portugal, a small rocky island rises from the flowing water, and on it stands one of the most romantic castles

Most great castles rely on a mountain, a crag, or a river bend to make them strong. The Castle of Coca, rising from the flat farmland of central Spain, has

Every nation has a place it regards as its birthplace, a spot where its story is felt to have begun. For Portugal, that place is a hill in the north

On a low hill above the town of Medina del Campo, in the heart of the plains of Castile, rises a great fortress of red brick: the Castillo de la

High in the foothills of the Spanish Pyrenees, clinging to a great outcrop of grey rock, stands one of the oldest and most complete castles in all of Spain: the

Not far from Madrid, at the foot of the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains, stands one of the most beautiful and best-preserved castles in all of Spain: the Castle of Manzanares