On the northwestern outskirts of Beijing, among lakes and wooded hills, lies a place that occupies a unique and painful position in the Chinese imagination. The Old Summer Palace, known

The world knows the Louvre as the greatest museum on earth, the home of the Mona Lisa and countless other treasures, visited by more people than any other art gallery

Rising sheer from the plains of central India, a long flat-topped hill of yellow sandstone lifts the great fort of Gwalior high above the city that shares its name. Along

In the northeastern city of Shenyang, far from the great capital of Beijing, stands a palace that holds a special place in the history of China. The Mukden Palace, also

At the foot of Edinburgh’s ancient Royal Mile, where the medieval streets of the old town give way to open parkland beneath a dramatic volcanic hill, stands the official residence

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