Weekend Trips

Perched above the Luberon valley, Gordes is built almost entirely from the pale stone quarried beneath it — walls, roofs, and streets in a single material.

Eguisheim's streets curve in concentric rings around its original medieval fortress, a layout still legible from above.

With fewer than a hundred residents, Gerberoy is one of the smallest members of Les Plus Beaux Villages de France.

Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert grew up around the 9th-century Abbey of Gellone, a stop on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela that earned the abbey its place on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

Vézelay's hilltop basilica, a starting point for medieval pilgrims heading to Santiago de Compostela, is itself inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Orta San Giulio occupies a promontory on Lake Orta, facing the small Isola San Giulio just offshore.

Asolo occupies a hilltop above the Prosecco-growing hills of the Veneto, a position that earned it the nickname ‘the city of a hundred horizons.’ Several Palladian villas lie within a short drive.

Civita di Bagnoregio stands alone on an eroding tufa pillar, reachable only by a footbridge — no vehicle has ever been able to reach it.

Spello climbs a ridge of Monte Subasio in Umbria, its Roman and medieval layers visible in the same walls.

Castiglione del Lago occupies a promontory surrounded on three sides by Lake Trasimeno.

Santillana del Mar's historic center is closed to motor vehicles, its stone streets unchanged enough to have earned the town the nickname 'the town of three lies' — it is neither holy, flat, nor by the sea.

Liérganes sits on the Miera river beneath a row of grand 'indiano' mansions, built by villagers who returned wealthy from the Americas.