Places rivkaarose Wants to Go

Local lore says two enemy dragons live within these breathtaking mountain lakes.

A small island with shimmering pink sands, home to loggerhead turtles and rare plants.

This often-missed monastery, set in a scenic mountain landscape, features unique frescoes, fortifications and legends.

Believed to be the only Orthodox church in the world that features a free-standing pulpit.

This 13th-century monastery chiseled into the side of a mountain is equipped with a bridge that can be lifted to protect against raids.

One of the largest single-span stone-arch bridges in the Balkans looks like something straight out of a fairytale.

An autonomous republic of Orthodox monks.

This medieval "painted village" is famous for its geometric facades.

Large collection from the 3rd millennium BCE.

A grotesque collection of wax limbs depicting the symptoms of venereal disease.

This 200-meter-high waterfall marks the site of Achilles’ immortal baptism at the mouth of the River Styx.

Replicas of Apollo's leonine stone guard cats still line a sacred row in Greece.

Gladiators once walked this ancient, subterranean passage.

The ruined doorway is a portal to the building's turbulent and torturous past.

With no menu and no sign, this 130-year-old taverna doles out affordable home cooking.

This wrecked ghost ship has been rusting on a Greek beach since the 1980s.

This remarkable cave was discovered after a shepherd watched bees enter and exit through a small fissure.

This small 16th-century church in Athens is almost entirely surrounded by a modern building.

The nuns here cultivate silk to weave some of the finest scarves in the world.

Modernist design and funerary customs meet Spartan traditions in this one-of-a-kind graveyard.

The ruins of an abandoned medieval city where the last Byzantine emperor was crowned.

This abandoned Greek island was the last active leper colony in Europe.

According to myth, Zeus himself was hidden in this cave to escape being eaten by his dad.

A Bronze age settlement on the Greek island of Santorini might have been the inspiration for Plato's Atlantis.