In the town of Kokand, in the fertile Fergana Valley of eastern Uzbekistan, a long tiled facade rises above a broad approach like a wall of jewelry. This is the

High on a wooded crag above the town of Sintra, wrapped for much of the year in the mists that roll off the Atlantic, stands one of the most extraordinary

A short distance from Lisbon, in the town that gave it its name, stands a palace that seems to have drifted straight out of eighteenth-century France and settled improbably on

Some buildings are simply large. A few are so ambitious, so total in their vision, that they reshape the very idea of what a building can be. The Palace of

On a rocky island in the Betwa River, in a quiet corner of central India, stands one of the country’s most atmospheric palace complexes, the fort of Orchha. Cross the

On the Left Bank of Paris, set behind one of the most beloved gardens in the world, stands a palace with a distinctly Italian air, its rusticated stone and bold

For seventy-two extraordinary days in the spring of 1871, the city of Paris governed itself. The national government had fled, the regular army had withdrawn, and into the vacuum stepped

High on a wooded peak above the town of Sintra, near Lisbon, stands one of the most extraordinary buildings in Europe: the Pena Palace. Painted in vivid reds and yellows,

On a small island in the Neva River, at the very heart of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, stands the fortress from which the whole of

For more than eight hundred years, people have been walking to Canterbury. In the Middle Ages they came in their thousands, by foot and on horseback, to pray at the