The European year
November in Europe
4 recurring fixtures, 0 countries at their best and 8 in the quieter shoulder — which is usually where you should be going.
On in November
Quieter, and often better, in November
Shoulder season. The Journey Planner scores these upward rather than downward for exactly this month.
Azerbaijan
Fire that comes out of the ground, a walled medieval city, and oil money spent on architecture.
Cyprus
The last divided capital in Europe, on an island of Byzantine churches and mountain wine.
Italy
A country invented in 1861 out of places that still think of themselves first.
Malta
Three inhabited islands of limestone, holding temples older than the pyramids and a city built by knights.
Portugal
Europe's western edge, facing an ocean it once mapped, with the oldest fixed borders on the continent.
Spain
Several countries wearing one flag, with the second-highest average altitude in Europe.
Türkiye
A city on two continents, and a Mediterranean coast with more classical ruins than Greece.
Vatican City
The smallest state in the world, at 0.49 square kilometres, and one of its largest art collections.
Where we would actually send you
Quiet places in countries that are in shoulder season this month — the intersection of the two things that matter. The drawing is where those six are, on one frame. Drawn from Natural Earth 1:110m admin 0 countries, public domain.
Sheki
A silk road town under wooded mountains, with a khan's summer palace whose windows are built without glue or nails.
Xınalıq
A village at 2,300 metres whose people speak a language related to nothing else, reached by a single mountain road.
Omodos & the wine villages
Cobbled mountain villages growing indigenous grapes nobody else has, around a 12th-century monastery.
Arezzo
A hill town with Piero della Francesca's greatest fresco cycle and none of Florence's queue.
Civita di Bagnoregio
A village on an eroding tufa pillar, reached by a footbridge, with about a dozen permanent residents left.
Lecce
Baroque carved in soft golden limestone, in the heel of Italy, an hour from two seas.