World Tourism Blog

Storied buildings let travelers’ imaginations run wild.

Travelers have long ago discovered most of Europe’s castles. These fortresses can be fun, offering battle re-enactments, sound-and-light shows, catapult demos, dress-up costumes, fake garden parties, wagon rides, tourist accommodations, and medieval banquets.

But beyond the touristy castles are the ones I prefer — the forgotten ones. These are evocative, stony husks without plaster or furnishings — where you’ll see broken stairways and open skies rather than rooftops. Massive chunks of stone no longer guard anything from anyone and lichen grows on walls seemingly to cushion stones for a fall they’ve been expecting for centuries.

Castle ruins invite you to ramble the ramparts and let your imagination roam. Climbing through waist-high weeds on rubble corralled by surviving walls, you can break off a spiky frond and live a sword-fern fantasy.

In France’s Dordogne region, I like to hike to Chateau de Commarque near Sarlat. The Chateau is a 20-minute walk through a forest of chestnut trees to a clearing, where the mostly ruined castle appears like a mirage. The owner, Hubert de Commarque, bought the castle in 1968 and has been digging it out of the forest ever since.

Along Italy’s Amalfi Coast in Ravello, the ruins of the 13th-century Villa Rufolo impressed Richard Wagner enough to place the second act of his opera “Parsifal” in a setting inspired by the villa’s magical gardens. With its commanding coastline view, the ruins create an operatic experience that doesn’t even need music.

In the scenic foothills of the French Pyrenees lies a series of surreal, mountain-capping castle ruins. Like a Maginot Line of the 13th century, these sky-high castles were strategically located between France and the Spanish kingdom of Roussillon. The most spectacular is the Chateau of Peyrepertuse, where the ruins seem to grow right out from the narrow splinter of cliff. The views are sensational — you can almost reach out and touch Spain.

Along the coast of Northern Ireland, the romantic remnants of Dunluce Castle perch dramatically on the edge of a rocky headland. On a stormy night in 1639, dinner was interrupted as half of the kitchen fell into the sea — taking the servants with it. That was the last straw for the lady of the castle, who packed up and moved inland. Ever since, the forces of nature have had their way.

Thanks to invading French armies, there are lots of ruined castles in Germany’s Rhineland. One massive edifice, Rheinfels Castle, sits like a dead pit bull above the village of St. Goar. It withstood a siege of 28,000 French troops in 1692. But in 1797, the French Revolutionary army destroyed it. Once the mightiest of Rhine castles, it offers the best ruined-castle experience on the famous river.

I’ve clambered through Rheinfels, climbing a dark spiral staircase, as bat dung drifted softly down around me. Standing gingerly at the top of the stairs, I looked out at empty space instead of a floor. Across the expanse was the most finished element of the castle: the still-tidy square holes into which hand-hewn floor beams had been stuck. What became of the beams and all they supported?

Light filtered from slits in the wall. Archers used these narrow breaks to shoot at invaders. Peering out, I surveyed the overgrown terrain beyond the castle; green and brushy today, but once shaved clean to create a no-man’s land, where no enemy could find cover as he approached.

At Rheinfels and some other castles, you can crawl through (claustrophobic) underground tunnels leading away from the shell of the castle. This is where explosives would be packed, ready to surprise invading forces and blow them to smithereens if they dared approach the walls.

Ruined castle appreciation isn’t for everyone. Some might say it’s a guy thing … to peer, wonderstruck, over the shoulder of a guide who lowers a lamp on a rope into a dungeon that has only one way in or out — a mean-spirited hole in the ceiling. Stories of knights sleeping in wooden boxes filled with hay in dank, ground-floor rooms evoke an era when life was nasty, brutish, and short (like the people).

The advent of powerful cannons — near the end of the Middle Ages — changed the very architecture of castles. Cannon balls were great levelers. Instead of soaring tall (and vulnerable), castles had to be built squat and stocky. But whether you like your castles short or tall, intact or in rubble, what’s always free to soar is your imagination. And when that kicks in, then humble and forgotten ruins can rival Europe’s great and famous castles.

By Rick Steves

Castle ruins can offer jaw-dropping views, like this one at Chateau of Peyrepertuse in the French Pyrenees.

Lebanon: Tiny country offers layers of history and remnants of many civilizations

Lebanon has been conquered and colonized many times over in the last three millennia. Among the famous invaders: Alexander the Great, Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and the Muslim warrior Saladin.

Others include Persians, Romans, Egyptians, Christian Crusaders, Ottoman Turks, the French and English in World War I and, more recently, Israelis. Lebanon’s rival Christians and Muslims also upset the peace, most notably in the 1975-90 civil war.

Many invaders left monuments and other remnants of their civilizations that can be visited in day trips from Lebanon’s urbane capital, Beirut. You can go east to the Roman ruins at Baalbek, north to the Crusader-era Citadel of Raymond de Saint-Gilles that looms over the city of Tripoli, south to the much fought-over Beaufort fortress, or northeast to the towering Cedars of Lebanon, and be back in Beirut in time for dinner. Lebanon is a tiny country — 135 miles long and about 50 miles wide — and all of these sites are within 60 miles of Beirut.

The National Museum in Beirut is a good place to get a picture of the parade of conquerors who’ve marched in and out. Artifacts run from prehistoric stone tools to statuary, coins, jewelry and mosaics from the bronze and iron ages, the Greek and Roman eras, and Byzantine and Arab rule.

Jabail-Byblos, 22 miles north of Beirut on the Mediterranean coast, offers an example of how archaeological sites in Lebanon often contain layers of history as one conqueror supplanted another. Here you will find a variety of ruins from the Persian, Phoenician, Greek, Roman and Crusader eras. The sarcophagus of a king, Ahiram, who died around 1000 B.C., has an inscription in Phoenician linear script, the father of alphabets. But there are also Byzantine-era mosaics from 2,000 years later.

Another example is Beaufort Castle, 47 miles southeast of Beirut, which sits atop a cliff about 2,000 feet above sea level in southern Lebanon, commanding a view into both Israel and Syria. The Crusader king Fulk seized the fortification in 1139, Saladin took it back for the Muslims in 1189, and the Israeli army captured it from Palestinian guerrillas in 1982.

By G.G. LaBELLE

A massive complex of Roman ruins at Baalbek, near the Syrian border, is just 55 miles east of Beirut, but getting there takes about two hours on a zigzag road over a mountain range and across the Bekaa Valley.

Archaeologists Hope to Put Artifacts on Display in New Underwater Museum

Deep beneath the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt’s ancient capital Alexandria lies a wealth of archaeological artifacts. It’s a treasure trove of 20,000 objects and counting, thousands of years old providing archaeologists the key to unlocking the mystery of ancient Egypt and its rulers.

One of them is the last Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra. Legend has it that when the Romans entered Egypt in 30 BC and after losing the Battle of Actium, Cleopatra and her lover Mark Anthony took their own lives in order to avoid being captured by their enemies. The Romans scattered their belongings and their tomb has never been found. Archaeologists however have isolated three sites in Alexandria where they believe the tomb is located.

But the royal quarters which include a palace and temple complex where Cleopatra is thought to have reigned from have been discovered. Previously, these sites were thought to have been swallowed up and lost more than 1,600 years ago. According to Ibrahim Darwish, General Director of museums in Alexandria, the quarters are from the era of “Ptolemy when the area was controlled and ruled by Cleopatra in 25 BC as well as the Roman period in 643 AD,” he told ABC News.

A French team lead by Frank Goddio has been leading the excavation along with an Egyptian counterpart since 1992 when the dig first started. Egyptologist and underwater archaeologist Ashraf Abdel Raouf is also part of this project and he explained to ABC News that they found “ceramics, bronze coins, small objects that are now in a laboratory and under restoration….remarkable objects,” adding that because “it was in the sea, it’s been conserved as it was sunken. We found pottery, statues as well and the sea conserved them.”

Many of the items that have been brought to the surface are currently on show at an exhibition called “Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt,” at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. There are at least 140 artifacts on display from colossal statues to coins with an insurance value of over 50 million dollars. The exhibition will go on the road in other parts of the U.S. beginning with New York City in February next year.

By LAMA HASAN

One of them is the last Queen of Egypt, Cleopatra. Legend has it that when the Romans entered Egypt in 30 BC and after losing the Battle of Actium, Cleopatra and her lover Mark Anthony took their own lives in order to avoid being captured by their enemies. The Romans scattered their belongings and their tomb has never been found. Archaeologists however have isolated three sites in Alexandria where they believe the tomb is located.