| Munich's Top 10 : Museums & Galleries |
| One of the largest museums in Europe for art, crafts, and folklore. In its wide-ranging collection are Gothic sculptures, precious wall hangings, watches, and Christmas cribs. |
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| Munich's Top 10 : Starnberger See |
| Members of the nobility built their summer residences here; Empress Elisabeth (Sisi) spent her summers at Possenhofen, while her cousin Ludwig II resided at Berg. The best way to experience the lake is to take a steamboat trip. |
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| Seattle's Top 10 : Moments in History |
| The Alaska Gold Rush officially kicked off in 1897 after a gold-filled steamship docked at Seattle’s waterfront. As the last gas for prospectors and suppliers bound for the gold fields, this city prospered as never before. |
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| Toronto's Top 10 : Niagara Falls (part 1) |
| One of the world’s most famous natural attractions, the great arcs of hissing, frothing water crashing over cliffs 20 stories high is a dazzling spectacle. Drifting spray adds to the excitement of being near the edge of a stomach-churning drop. |
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| Boston's Top 10 : Charlestown Navy Yard |
| Charlestown remained vital to US security until its decommissioning in 1974. From the 200-year-old wooden-hulled USS Constitution to the World War II-era steel destroyer USS Cassin Young, the yard gives visitors an all-hands-on-deck historical experience unparalleled in America. |
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| New York's Top 10 : Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum |
| One of the great architectural achievements of the 20th century, Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1959 spiral design alone would make this museum a must. Solomon Guggenheim’s core collection of Abstract art has been widened by donations of several important collections. |
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| Paris Top 10 : Hôtel des Invalides |
| The “invalides” for whom this imposing Hôtel was built were wounded soldiers of the late 17th century. Louis XIV had the building constructed between 1671 and 1678, and veterans are still housed here, although only a dozen or so compared to the original 6,000. |
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| Paris Top 10 : Sainte-Chapelle |
| This Gothic masterpiece, built by Louis IX (1214– 70) as a shrine for his holy relics of the passion and completed in 1248, is considered the most beautiful church in Paris, not least for its 15 stained-glass windows soaring 15 m (50 ft) to a star-covered vaulted roof. |
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| London's Top 10 : Westminster Abbey |
| A glorious example of Medieval architecture on a truly grand scale, this former Benedictine abbey church stands on the south side of Parliament Square. Founded in the 11th century by Edward the Confessor, it survived the Reformation and continued as a place of royal ceremonials. |
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| London's Top 10 : Royal Parks and Gardens |
| Buckingham Palace overlooks two of London ‘s most central Royal Parks – St James’s and Green Park – and is just a short walk from Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. |
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| Berlin's Top 10 : Modern Buildings |
| Berliners are not too fond of the Chancellor’s new offices, although this is the only new government building to have been designed by a Berlin architect. |
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| Berlin's Top 10 : Historic Buildings |
| Built according to plans by Philipp Daniel Boumann in 1785–90, this palace was the residence of the Hohenzollerns until 1861. Since 1994 the stately building with its Neo-Classical façade has been the official residence of the President of the Federal Republic. |
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| San Francisco's Top 10 : Historic Sites |
| The area that witnessed the worst misbehavior of the Barbary Coast days contains some of the city’s oldest, loveliest buildings. One of the very few areas that were spared in the 1906 conflagration . |
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| Washington, D.C.'s Top 10 : Mount Vernon (part 1) |
| This graceful mansion, on the banks of the Potomac River, is the second most visited historic residence in America after the White House. George Washington spent part of his childhood here and returned after his presidency. |
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| Rome's Top 10 : Museo Nazionale Romano (part 1) |
| The National Museum of Rome, with its excellent Classical art collection, grew too vast for its home in the Baths of Diocletian, which closed in 1981. In 1998 the collection was split between various sites, becoming a truly modern, 21st-century museum. |
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| Turkey Travel guide - Turkish delights (Part 1) |
| Picked up at Dalaman airport late at night, the two-hour transfer to Yediburunlar Lighthouse had felt like the beginning of an adventure as we drove up the dark and rugged mountain on ever-narrower, steep roads. |
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| Hong Kong's Top 10 : Big Buddha and Po Lin Monastery |
| Once a humble house built by three monks to worship Buddha, Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island is now a large and important temple. Its crowning glory, the giant Buddha statue facing the monastery, is an object of veneration for devotees and one of Hong Kong’s most popular tourist sights. |
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| Hong Kong's Top 10 : Cheung Chau Island |
| This tiny, charming island, a half-hour ferry ride west of Hong Kong, makes a great escape from the heat and hassles of the city, except maybe at weekends when everyone else has the same idea. |
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| Madrid’s Top 10 : Parque Del Retiro |
| The Retiro is the city’s green lung and the madrileños’ favourite weekend retreat. The aristocracy was first admitted to the former royal grounds in 1767 but it was another century before the gates were opened to the general public. |
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| Madrid’s Top 10 : Centro de Arte Reina Sofía |
| The museum, set in a converted hospital, was inaugurated by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofía in September 1990 and, besides the permanent collection, stages outstanding temporary exhibitions from around the world. |
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| Beijing's Top 10 : Ming Tombs |
| The site was selected because of its auspicious feng shui alignment; a ridge of mountains to the north cradles the tombs on three sides, protecting the dead from the evil spirits carried on the north wind. |
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| Beijing's Top 10 : 798 Art District |
| Since the first artists set up in Da Shan Zi’s newly vacated 798 factory in 2001, the East German-built industrial compound has become a world-famous center of contemporary Chinese art. |
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| Chicago's Top 10 : Frank Lloyd Wright’s Oak Park |
| This quiet suburb, seven miles (11 km) west of downtown Chicago, contains the world’s largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings. It was here that Wright developed his Prairie style, (inspired by the flat lines of the Midwestern plains), influencing other architects such as George Maher. |
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| Chicago's Top 10 : The University of Chicago |
| With Chicago’s expansion in the late 19th century, a major university was the perfect addition to an array of new cultural institutions. Funded by oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, (who deemed it his best ever investment) the forward-thinking institution opened in 1892. |
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| Seattle's Top 10 : Discovery Park |
| Occupying the northwestern edge of the Magnolia headland north of Elliott Bay, Discovery Park is Seattle’s largest and most varied in-city escape. Even though the US Army’s Fort Lawton sold surplus base territory to the city, Army Reserves still use a portion of the park for training and officers’ quarters. |
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| Seattle's Top 10 : Woodland Park Zoo |
| Occupying an area of 92 acres, the landscape offers a natural habitat for nearly 300 animal species. Reflecting a naturalistic mission to advocate conservation and education while imparting the value of an ecological perspective, the animal habitats are as close to nature as possible. |
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| Barcelona’s Top 10 : Museu Picasso |
| Pay homage to the 20th-century’s most acclaimed artist at this treasure-filled museum. Highlighting Pablo Picasso’s (1881–1973) formative years, the museum boasts the world’s largest collection of the artist’s early works. |
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| Toronto's Top 10 : Hockey Hall of Fame |
| Housed in part in a beautiful former bank building dating to 1885, which is incorporated into BCE Place, this Hall of Fame contains the most comprehensive collection of hockey artifacts and memorabilia in the world, among them the first Stanley Cup trophy. |
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| Toronto's Top 10 : Eaton Centre |
| Named after Canadian retail legend Timothy Eaton – whose mail-order catalog and department store, Eaton’s, was a beloved national institution until 1999, when the company declared bankruptcy – this multi-story shopping center is the quintessential downtown mall: big, busy, and boisterous. |
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| Boston's Top 10 : Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum |
| One needn’t be a fervent patron of the arts to be wowed by the Gardner Museum. Its namesake, who travelled tirelessly to acquire the pieces now housed here, opened the museum in 1903 to befit (some would say to rival) her staggering collection. |
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| Boston's Top 10 : Trinity Church |
| Boston has a knack for creating curious visual juxtapositions, and one of the most remarkable is in Copley Square, where H. H. Richardson’s 19th-century Romanesque Trinity Church reflects in the blue-tinted glass of the decidedly 20th-century John Hancock Tower. |
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| New York's Top 10 : Metropolitan Museum of Art (part 1) |
| One of the world’s great art museums, the Metropolitan is a veritable collection of museums, spanning 5,000 years of culture from every part of the globe. Each of its specialized galleries holds an abundance of treasures. |
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| New York's Top 10 : Central Park |
| Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1858, the park took 16 years to create and involved the planting of over 500,000 trees and shrubs, the hauling in of vast amounts of stone and earth to form hills, lakes, and meadows, and the building of 30 stone-and-iron bridges and arches. |
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| Paris Top 10 : The Panthéon |
| Today Paris’s beautiful Panthéon building is a fitting final resting place for the nation’s great figures. However, it was originally built as a church, on the instigation of Louis XV to celebrate his recovery from a serious bout of gout in 1744. |
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| Paris Top 10 : Centre Georges Pompidou |
| Today one of the world’s most famous pieces of modern architecture, the Pompidou Centre opened in 1977, when architects Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano startled everyone by turning the building “inside out”, with brightly coloured pipes displayed on the façade. |
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