Atlas Obscura

Founded around the year 1000, Borgo San Giuliano, was originally the city's fishermen’s quarter.  

The tradition of painting murals that has made Borgo San Giuliano famous has deep roots. In 1979, the city council suggested demolishing the neighborhood to make way for a new residential development. In response, locals organised the first “Festa de’ Borg” to c...

For nearly a century, Fannie Bay Gaol was the Northern Territory of Australia's principal prison, confining a range of prisoners from cattle rustlers and opium traffickers to political prisoners and condemned murderers. It was opened as Her Majesty's Gaol and Labour Prison in 1883 and remained in use until 1979. This made it one of Australia's longest operating fronti...

Every European Christmas market sells the same mulled wine out of the same wooden hut. This is not a criticism — it is a very good hut, and the wine is warm. But it is not a reason to choose one country over another, and the "best Christmas markets" lists that dominate December travel writing are, functionally, lists of interchangeable huts.

The traditions are the oppo...

Here is the failure mode nobody warns you about.

You book a week in a country you chose because it appeared on a list of the best places to see the northern lights. You arrive. It is cloudy for six nights. You go home having seen nothing, and you conclude the country was wrong.

The country was not wrong. The aurora is not a destination. It is a probability sprea...

Every winter sun list is the same list. Somewhere with a beach, ranked by average January temperature, with a paragraph about resorts. The only variable is the number, and the number is available on any weather site for free.

Here is a better question. Rather than asking where it happens to be warm in January, ask where January is the only time to go — where t...