The Winchester Mystery House was built from the late 1800s onwards in San Jose, California, by the heir to the Winchester rifle business, who spent huge sums on its quirky construction and decor.

In Gori, Georgia, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s achievements are glorified. In a subterranean room in Tbilisi his early exploits are possibly magnified. In a distant spa town his personal bath sits neglected.

Travel articles billed as ‘ultimate’ guides to destinations pepper the internet, but mainly deliver keywords intended to fool search engines. An old-school travel writer shares some tips for budding authors.

Three decades after the Soviet era ended, Armenia is relearning its ancient winemaking techniques and rediscovering the grape varietals that once made the country an oenophile’s dream.

Celebrating their 150th and 125th anniversaries respectively, San Francisco’s cable cars and Ferry Building give a fascinating insight into how public transport systems can help build a city.

Ottoman Empire castles, a church and Roman bridge from the 3rd century, early evidence of bureaucracy, a stunning mountaintop burial site – Anatolia is history brought to life.

The original North American Chinatown, in San Francisco, has preserved its character and warren of alleys, but is reinventing itself through art, food and tours that highlight its history of activism.

Dark sky tourism, or astrotourism, is surging in popularity as people seek out parks, reserves and other locations that offer star-filled skies undisturbed by the planet’s spreading light pollution.

Using a Western interpretation of a 2,400-year-old document, Beijing seeks Unesco’s stamp for a “Central Axis” of monuments old and new, many badly restored or entirely rebuilt.

Vancouver, in British Columbia, Canada, is within easy reach of many offshore islands as well as myriad inland lakes and rivers, and seaplane services, tours and charters are perfect for viewing the spectacular scenery and sleepy hamlets.

The new talking mirrors at select Days Inn hotels in the US give guests compliments (voiced by Ross Mathews) at the press of a button – but wouldn’t you rather, say, faster internet?

Visitors to the old Swiss towns of Chur and Gruyères can take in the weird art of H R Giger, the designer behind the titular extraterrestrials in the Alien movies, while enjoying idyllic medieval backdrops.

A highly Instagrammable former fishing town in Uzbekistan offers disaster tourists photo ops that highlight the consequences of the slow destruction of Central Asia’s Aral Sea.

Two long-distance train rides across Canada’s British Columbia, on the plush Canadian and more utilitarian Skeena, take passengers past snowy mountains, frozen rivers, elk and moose.

With one foot in Europe and the other in Asia, Istanbul truly deserves the East-meets-West label, and few other places can rival the Turkish city’s wealth of tourist attractions.

The ‘disc hitting’ winter festival is a popular event in one Swiss mountain village, but climate change has forced the 2023 event to be cancelled because the risk of forest fires is too great.

An exhibition of 28 works by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, including Girl with a Pearl Earring, is the first – and probably last – time so many of his paintings can be seen together.

Cruise beneath the spaghetti of expressway and railway bridges and Tokyo reveals its history – in the names of bridges, and their superstructure – and glimpses of nature.

Canal cruising through rural Ireland seems like a journey through time as much as space, punctuated with cosy, welcoming pubs in between stretches of beautiful countryside.

With instructions on what to do if there’s another tsunami, we sample a new trail through northeastern Honshu, where the 2011 wave’s destructive power is still evident, along with rebuilding.

Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva highlight what heritage-rich Uzbekistan has to offer tourists, from stunning historic buildings like the Great Minaret to remnants of Silk Road riches,

Before his death in 1984, Igor Savitsky predicted ‘one day people from Paris will be coming’ to see his collection of Soviet avant-garde art in remote Nukus, Uzbekistan. Now he’s been proved right.

Colditz is the best known of the many castles of Saxony, including one where Martin Luther helped design the first purpose-built Protestant chapel, and another that looks like a Lord of the Rings set.

High-speed bullet trains are the pride of Japan’s rail system but scenic rural lines criss-cross the country. It’s worth visiting the country just to experience them.

Led by your nose, a tour of Vienna’s churches, tombs, libraries and shops can be a treat for a sense largely ignored in our visual social-media age.

Photographer Natacha de Mahieu’s new series of images taken at some of the world’s most popular Instagram spots highlights how people can ignore the very landscape they are so keen to snap.

Vienna is home to small-scale vineyards attached to wine bars called Heuriger, which traditionally make young wines from a mix of grapes. They have a new focus on quality and consistency to draw the young crowd.

Ulysses author James Joyce’s brief stay in this Dublin tower, which serves as a key setting in the book and now functions as the James Joyce Tower and Museum, was certainly eventful.

China’s surveillance system may not be as advanced as the Communist Party claims, but the omnipresence of cameras has reaped rewards in controlling, coercing and cowing its vast and diverse public.

It’s difficult to know what infuriates Chris Blackhurst most about HSBC’s laundering of Mexican drug cartel money, for which it paid a US$1.9 billion fine in 2012.