These 100 inspiring best travel books will take you to another time and place, fuel your wanderlust, and make you want to travel the world! Read around the world with this incredible list.
30 great travel books to inspire you to travel the world. The best travel books we have read, by Bill Bryson, Jon Krakauer, and more.
30 wanderlust-inspiring books for travellers, featuring the best fiction, non-fiction and memoirs – travel books to transport you around the world.
I review books set in Croatia, both nonfiction and fiction. Then ask for your help in compiling a list of books set in Bavaria.
This diverse selection aims to enrich your experience in Italy and deepen your relationship with Rome. All have been developed with an eye towards established traditions as well as contemporary undercurrents. Custom experiences tailored upon request. CONTEMPORARY ART
China's Zhongshuge chain opened up an extravagant new bookstore in Chengdu.
The Showtime limited series, starring Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey, chronicles the romance between two men against the backdrop of key moments in queer history.
The power of you.
Top Things To Do In Edinburgh – A detailed guide on the 30 best places to visit in Edinburgh including where to eat & drink, activities and accommodation recommendations.
Designed by London-based photographer Cameron Baxter A Comprehensive Guide To Navigating Parallel Dimensions is a lovely bought of retro-themed fakery...
Bavaria is home to some of the most magical fairytale castles in the world and another enchanting secret: jawdropping libraries in Munich!
Weekday Wanderlust | Places: Admont Abbey Library, Austria - a Benedictine monastery on the Enns River in the town of Admont, Austria
Stunning images of iconic libraries from all over the globe.
How to plan a day trip from Kyoto to Uji, Japan including the best things to do and how to get to Uji from Kyoto, Japan.
Find the perfect Canterbury day trip itinerary for a great trip to Canterbury from London. Discover what to do and how to get to Canterbury
from Elke in Germany
As part of the Paper Biennial 2012 at the Meermanno Museum in The Netherlands, Spanish artist Alicia Martín created one of her significant book sculptures using thousands of books. Considered as one of the most significant contemporary spanish artists, Martín’s work always deals with books as a constant raw material and source of inspiration. Symbols […]
by james_films
Looking for a good book to transport you to a faraway place? Here are 15 of the most engrossing + informative books on Indonesia.
The world is full of mysteries, magic, and beautiful places that seem like they could only exist in our imagination or in books and movies. Believe it or not, some of these places are actually real!
The Palais Garnier is a 1,979-seat opera house, which was built from 1861 to 1875 for the Paris Opera. The Palais Garnier has been called “probably the most famous opera house in the world, a…
Libraries so stunning you probably won't get much reading done.
Jade Flower Palace The stream swirls. The wind moans in The pines. Grey rats scurry over Broken tiles. What prince, long ago, Built this palace, standing in Ruins beside the cliff? There are Green ghost fires in the black rooms. The shattered pavements are all Washed away, Ten-thousand organ pipes whistle and roar. The storm scatters the red Autumn leaves. His dancing girls are yellow dust. Their painted cheeks have crumbled Away. His gold chariots And courtiers are gone. Only A stone horse is left of his Glory. I sit on the grass and Start a poem, but the pathos of It overcomes me. The future Slips inperceptively away. Who can say what the years will bring? -Tu Fu (c. 713-770) tr. Kenneth Rexroth The sigh of History rises over ruins… - Derek Walcott They told of dripping stone walls in uninhabited castles and of ivy-clad monastery ruins by moonlight, of locked inner rooms and secret dungeons, dank charnel houses and overgrown graveyards, of footsteps creaking upon staircases and fingers tapping at casements, of howlings and shriekings, groanings and scuttlings and the clanking of chains, of hooded monks and headless horseman, swirling mists and sudden winds, insubstantial specters and sheeted creatures, vampires and bloodhounds, bats and rats and spiders, of men found at dawn and women turned white-haired and raving lunatic, and of vanished corpses and curses upon heirs. -Susan Hill In the park which surrounded our house were the ruins of the former mansion of Brentwood, a much smaller and less important house than the solid Georgian edifice which we inhabited. The ruins were picturesque, however, and gave importance to the place. Even we, who were but temporary tenants, felt a vague pride in them, as if they somehow reflected a certain consequence upon ourselves. The old building had the remains of a tower, an indistinguishable mass of mason-work, overgrown with ivy, and the shells of walls attached to this were half filled up with soil. I had never examined it closely, I am ashamed to say. There was a large room, or what had been a large room, with the lower part of the windows still existing, on the principal floor, and underneath other windows, which were perfect, though half filled up with fallen soil, and waving with a wild growth of brambles and chance growths of all kinds. This was the oldest part of all. At a little distance were some very commonplace and disjointed fragments of the building, one of them suggesting a certain pathos by its very commonness and the complete wreck which it showed. This was the end of a low gable, a bit of grey wall, all encrusted with lichens, in which was a common doorway. Probably it had been a servants’ entrance, a backdoor, or opening into what are called “the offices” in Scotland. No offices remained to be entered-pantry and kitchen had all been swept out of being; but there stood the doorway open and vacant, free to all the winds, to the rabbits, and every wild creature. It struck my eye, the first time I went to Brentwood, like a melancholy comment upon a life that was over. A door that led to nothing - closed once perhaps with anxious care, bolted and guarded, now void of any meaning. It impressed me, I remember, from the first; so perhaps it may be said that my mind was prepared to attach to it an importance, which nothing justified. - Margaret Oliphant, The Gentlewomen of Evil: An Anthology of Rare Supernatural Stories from the Pens of Victorian Ladies He loved the extensive vaults where you could hear the night birds and the sea breeze; he loved the craggy ruins bound together by ivy, those dark halls, and any appearance of death and destruction. Having fallen so far from so high a position, he loved anything that had also fallen from a great height. -Gustave Flaubert The stones here speak to me, and I know their mute language. Also, they seem deeply to feel what I think. So a broken column of the old Roman times, an old tower of Lombardy, a weather-beaten Gothic piece of a pillar understands me well. But I am a ruin myself, wandering among ruins. -Heinrich Heine It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth. -Alain de Botton Ozymandias I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. -Percy Bysshe Shelley Ah, what sights and sounds and pain lie beneath that mist. And we had thought that our hard climb out of that cruel valley led to some cool, green and peaceful, sunlit place—but it’s all jungle here, a wild and savage wilderness that’s overrun with ruins. But put on your crown, my Queen, and we will build a New City on these ruins. -Eldridge Cleaver He used to say that he never felt the hardness of the human struggle or the sadness of history as he felt it among those ruins. He used to say, too, that it made one feel an obligation to do one’s best. -Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark The ascendancy over men’s minds of the ruins of the stupendous past, the past of history, legend and myth, at once factual and fantastic, stretching back and back into ages that can but be surmised, is half-mystical in basis. The intoxication, at once so heady and so devout, is not the romantic melancholy engendered by broken towers and mouldered stones; it is the soaring of the imagination into the high empyrean where huge episodes are tangled with myths and dreams; it is the stunning impact of world history on its amazed heirs. -Rose Macaulay, The Pleasure of Ruins The sight of so many ruins destroys any desire to build shanties; all this ancient dust makes one indifferent to fame. -Gustave Flaubert: Flaubert in Egypt Shame on those who remain unmoved, whose pace fails to quicken, on entering one of these old habitations, a manor-house falling to wrack and ruin or a desecrated church! - Petrus Borel Some ruins of ancient times are much more beautiful than the best buildings of modern eras! - Mehmet Murat ildan The broken pink pillars, in the half-light, might have been waiting to fall down on him: the pool, covered with green scum, its steps torn away and hanging by one rotting clamp, to close over his head. The shattered evil-smelling chapel, overgrown with weeds, the crumbling walls, splashed with urine, on which scorpions lurked - wrecked entablature, sad archivolt, slippery stones covered with excreta - this place, where love had once brooded, seemed part of a nightmare. - Malcolm Lowery, Under the Volcano There’s something inherently melancholy about ruins and abandoned places. Perhaps it is a recognition of the fragility, mortality, and inevitability of our own demise i spite of our best efforts and in the face of our striving for beauty. A great many ruins speak of mankind’s stupidity: warfare and greed… leading to economic collapse. I also feel a degree of incomprehension. How do some of these gorgeous buildings end up abandoned? How do we allow them to remain so while expending vast fortunes building new homes and factories and stores? How do we allow them to remain so while endless individuals are left homeless… living on the streets? At the same time… many of these ruins speak of hope as we observe the dialog… the betrothal of Art and Nature building upon the bones of the dead.
It took a headstrong friend and decades of cultural change before the city embraced its hometown hero.
Looking for the best Norwich bookshops? Make sure to add these 12 bookshops in Norwich to your list!
Leadenhall Market, London • Kings Cross Station, London • Shell Cottage • Glenfinnan Viaduct, Scotland • Cliffs of Moher, Ireland • More ...
Any book lover will proudly tell you that it's what's inside the book that counts. But let's all be honest with ourselves... books are also very pretty. Books are attractive. Books are beautiful. And a good book shop is a work of art. We may claim…
From classic views to cool cafes and hidden spots, here's a list of some of the most Instagrammable places in Munich
However, on my recent trip to the Danish capital, I realised that there is an abundance of things to do in Copenhagen for book lovers.
Facade of Bourges cathedral in the sun
I'm a sucker for history and hidden things in a city. We like to see the big sights, but we also take great joy in exploring the lesser known parts of cities when we travel. One of the things I really wanted to do with our time in Paris was make a visit to the catacombs. While not secret by any means, climbing underground for a few hours, exploring tunnels bored hundreds of years ago and now filled with bones, definitely has the air of feeling secret, hidden, and definitely eerie (what can be more hidden than something underground with limited access?!). The catacombs were the first stop of many on our days of sightseeing in Paris.
Lapland Traditional Costumes, Finland
What are the best architectural buildings to see in Seoul? Here is a guide to the coolest buildings with the best design. Visit these awesome spots that are a must see if you're interested in building design and use.
Moderne Weihnachtsdeko, festliche Interieurs samt Tipps von Bewohnern, Geschenkideen oder alles für gemütliche Stunden: Chefredakteurin Anne Gelpke stellt die neue Ausgabe vor.
Join me at Stephen Candler Photography ¦ Google+ ¦ Twitter ¦ Facebook Inside the Corn Exchange, Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England, UK. 2015
Planning to visit St. Florian Monastery? Tips for visiting this off the beaten path Austrian monastery with highlights of Stift St. Florian.
The Klementinum library, a beautiful example of Baroque architecture, was first opened in 1722 as part of the Jesuit university, and houses over 20,000 books. It was voted as one of the most beautiful and majestic libraries in the world by our readers!
Explore #221 The second-oldest monastery in Prague, Strahov was founded high above Malá Strana in 1143 by Vladislav II. It's still home to Premonstratensian monks, a scholarly order closely related to the Jesuits, and their dormitories and refectory are off-limits. What draws visitors are the monastery's ornate libraries. Over the centuries, the monks have assembled one of the world's best collections of philosophical and theological texts, including illuminated (decorated with colored designs) manuscripts and first editions. There are more than 42 000 old prints. The rich wood-accented Philosophical Library's 14m-high (46-ft.) ceiling is decorated with a 1794 fresco entitled The Struggle of Mankind to Know Real Wisdom, by A. F. Maulpertsch, a Viennese master of rococo. Intricate woodwork frames the immense collection of books. View On Black
My five favourite colleges in Cambridge are tourist-friendly, have lots of photogenic corners and are a quiet haven away from the crowds.
Belgium is a country known for its stunning architecture. Today we share our top 12 most magical castles to visit in Flanders and Wallonia.
Does the sight of a room full of books fill you with joy? This collection of historical and modern temples to literature rounds up the most beautiful libraries in the world.
poboh: Marcel Rieder. (1851-1925)
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