Puerto Vallarta: A Fishing Village That a Film Crew Accidentally Made Famous
Puerto Vallarta was a relatively small, quiet fishing town until 1963, when director John Huston chose the nearby jungle coastline to film…
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Kauai: The Garden Island That Was Never Fully Tamed
Kauai is the oldest of Hawaii’s major islands, formed by volcanic activity roughly 5 million years ago, its age giving erosion far…
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Denali: North America’s Tallest Peak, Renamed Back to Its Original Name
Denali, at 6,190 metres, is the tallest mountain in North America, and its name carries its own layered political history, Alaska Native…
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Phnom Penh: A Capital That Was Nearly Emptied Completely
Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital, was forcibly evacuated almost entirely within days of the Khmer Rouge’s takeover in April 1975, an estimated two…
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Manila: A City Rebuilt on Top of a Devastated Spanish Fortress
Intramuros, Manila’s historic walled city, was founded by Spanish colonisers in 1571 and served as the administrative and religious centre of the…
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Kuala Lumpur: A Skyline Grown From a Muddy River Confluence
Kuala Lumpur’s name translates literally to “muddy confluence,” a reference to the meeting point of the Klang and Gombak rivers where Chinese…
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Beijing’s Temple of Heaven: A Building Where Only the Emperor Could Pray
The Temple of Heaven was built in the early 15th century during the Ming Dynasty, and for nearly 500 years, its central…
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Hiroshima: A City That Chose to Rebuild Around Its Own Wound
Hiroshima was almost entirely destroyed on August 6, 1945, when the United States dropped the world’s first atomic bomb used in warfare…
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Osaka Castle: A Fortress Rebuilt in Concrete After Repeated Destruction
Osaka Castle was originally built in 1583 by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of the most powerful warlords in Japanese history, intended as a…
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Nice: A Riviera City Built by Aristocrats Escaping Winter
Nice’s famous Promenade des Anglais, the palm-lined waterfront walkway that defines the city’s image today, was originally funded in the 1820s by…
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Bordeaux: A City That Built Itself Entirely Around Wine
Bordeaux’s wine trade dates back roughly 2,000 years to Roman settlement, but it was medieval trade with England, following the marriage of…
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Schönbrunn Palace: An Empire’s Answer to a Rival It Never Quite Matched
Schönbrunn Palace was conceived, according to popular but disputed legend, as the Habsburg dynasty’s answer to Versailles, an attempt to build something…
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