Best Places to Visit for Food & Wine in Europe

Producing a rarefied concentration of what many consider the world's greatest wines and harboring a knee-weakening concentration of magnificent Romanesque abbeys, Burgundy hardly needs to be beautiful—but it is. Its green-hedgerowed countryside... Read more

As you approach Provence there's a magical moment when you finally leave the north behind: cypresses and red-tile roofs appear; you hear the screech of cicadas and breathe the scent of wild thyme and lavender. Along the highway, oleanders bloom against... Read more

Whether it's a riverside vista that takes in the Seine, Notre-Dame Cathedral, and the Eiffel Tower, or the view of elegant buildings and mansard roofs from a hotel room window, it doesn't take much to convince anyone that Paris is one of the most beautiful... Read more

In the 15th century Florence was at the center of the artistic revolution that would later be known as the Renaissance. Today the Renaissance remains the main attraction here—the abundance of art treasures is mind-boggling. Florence's is a subtle... Read more

A fairy-tale realm par excellence, the Loire Valley is studded with storybook villages, time-burnished towns, and—bien sûr—the famous châteaux de la Loire. These postcard icons, like Chenonceau and Chambord, seem to be strung like... Read more

Midway down the Italian peninsula, Tuscany (Toscana in Italian) is distinguished by rolling hills, snowcapped mountains, dramatic cypress trees, and miles of coastline on the Tyrrhenian Sea—which all adds up to gorgeous views at practically every... Read more

As you journey down the fabled Amalfi Coast, your route takes you past rocky cliffs plunging into the sea and small boats lying in sandy coves like brightly colored fish. Erosion has contorted the rocks into shapes resembling figures from mythology and... Read more

The city's setting at the confluence of the Saône and the Rhône is a spectacular riverine landscape overlooked from the heights to the west by the imposing Notre-Dame de Fourvière church and from the north by the hilltop neighborhood... Read more

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The word conjures something magical as it rolls off the tongue: Istria. Beyond sounding poetic, however, the name of this region of Croatia is derived from the name of the Illyrian people who occupied the area well before the Romans first arrived in the... Read more

Italy's capital is one of the great cities of Europe. It's a large, busy metropolis that lives in the here and now, yet there's no other place on earth where you'll encounter such powerful evocations of a long and spectacular past, from the Colosseum to... Read more

Milan is Italy's business hub and crucible of chic. Between the Po's rich farms and the industrious mountain valleys, it has long been the country's capital of commerce, finance, fashion, and media. Rome may be bigger and have the political power, but... Read more

As you head toward Reims, the landscape loosens and undulates, and the hills tantalize with French vineyards that—thanks to la méthode champenoise—produce the world's antidote to gloom. Each year, millions of bottles of bubbly mature... Read more

Swashbuckling Madrid—the Spanish capital since 1561—celebrates itself and life in general around the clock. A vibrant crossroads, Madrid has an infectious appetite for art, music, and epicurean pleasure, and it's turned into a cosmopolitan... Read more

The maritime Garden of Eden called Normandy sprawls across France's northwestern corner in a shape roughly resembling a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Due to its geographic position, this region is blessed with a stunning natural beauty that once inspired Maupassant... Read more