Best Europe Dream Vacation Ideas for a One-Week Trip

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

If London contained only its landmarks it would still rank as one of the world's top destinations. But England's capital is much more. It is a bevy of English bobbies, an ocean of black umbrellas, and an unconquered continuance of more than 2,000 years... 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

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

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

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

Barcelona is a banquet for all the senses, though perhaps mainly for sight. Not far behind are the pleasures of the palate. The air temperature is almost always about right, more and more streets are pedestrianized, and tavern after tavern burrows elegantly... Read more

Straddling Europe and Asia, Istanbul—once known as Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine and then the Ottoman Empire—has for centuries been a bustling and cosmopolitan crossroads. But what's more striking than the meeting of East and West... Read more

One of the great capitals of Europe, Vienna was for centuries the main stomping grounds for the Habsburg rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The empire is long gone, but many reminders of the city's imperial heyday remain, carefully preserved by the... Read more

Once a pleasure dome to Roman emperors and now Italy's most glamorous seaside getaway, Capri (pronounced with an accent on the first syllable) is a craggy island at the southern end of the Bay of Naples. The boom in cruises to the Naples area (almost 1... Read more

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, no other city in Europe has seen more change than the German capital. Two Berlins that had been separated for almost 30 years have become one, and in the scar of barren borderland between them cutting-edge architecture... Read more

Lisbon bears the mark of an incredible heritage with laid-back pride. Spread over seven hills north of the Rio Tejo (Tagus River) estuary, the city also presents a variety of faces to those who negotiate its switchback streets. In the oldest bairros (neighborhoods)... 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

The whole Eastern Alps region is dramatic countryside, with breathtaking scenery and great winter sports equal to those in Switzerland. Here majestic peaks, many well over 9,750 feet, soar above slow-moving glaciers that give way to sweeping Alpine meadows... Read more

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