The basilica, under construction since 1882 and the tallest church in the world since late 2025. What is finished, what is not, and why entry needs booking.
Barcelona: the tourist tax and the 2028 end of tourist flats, the airport ticket trap, the low-emission zone, Catalan for visitors, and where the city's sights are.
The Nasrid palace complex above Granada and Spain's most visited monument. Tickets are nominative, timed and checked against a passport, and must be booked well in advance.
Mount Royal is the hill the city is named after, carrying a park of some 200 hectares designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The illuminated cross is currently dark, with relighting expected in autumn 2027.
Old Montreal holds the old streets and squares and the Old Port along the waterfront, with the Lachine Canal running off its western edge. Permanent settlement dates from 1642 rather than 1611.
Saint Joseph's Oratory is the largest church in Canada, built at the urging of the lay brother canonised in 2010 as Saint André Bessette. The cross on its dome is the highest point in Montreal.
The Lachine Canal was cut to bypass the Lachine Rapids, not to reach the Ottawa River. Obsolete from 1959 but open until 1970, its towpath is now the best urban cycle route in Montreal.
The Bronze Horseman stands on a boulder of rapakivi granite hauled overland on a hand-built bronze ball race, and the Alexander Column is held on its pedestal by nothing but its own weight. Older accounts swap the two stones over.
A hundred and one islands was true in 1800 and five hundred bridges appears to have no source. What the delta holds is chain suspension bridges of the 1820s, seven identical towered bridges on the Fontanka, and a span three times wider than it is long.
Nevsky Prospekt is named after the Alexander Nevsky monastery at its eastern end, not after the river, and it runs four and a half kilometres from the Admiralty to the monastery gates.
