The axe marks are still visible on the oak beams overhead, each strike a century and a half old. Father Vasile stands beneath the nave of Șurdești Church, his hand resting on timber darker than charcoal, and tells me the builders used no…
Hortobágy is Europe’s last great steppe, UNESCO-listed, where the csikós riders still drive their horses in deep blue shirts and racka sheep have spiral horns. A Hungarian world found nowhere else.
Alberobello holds more than 1,500 trulli and joined the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1996. But the town is two places — Rione Monti, the celebrated tourist quarter, and Rione Aia Piccola, still residential, still quiet, containing the experience the famous half lost to its own success.
The Atlas is Amazigh territory, and travelling through it without engaging with that culture is like travelling through northern Italy without tasting the wine.