The most romantic destinations

Venice is built across more than a hundred small islands in a shallow lagoon, with canals serving as streets and boats in place of cars. The historic center fans out from St. Mark's Square along the great S-curve of the Grand Canal, crossed by the marble Rialto Bridge.

The city's monumental heart is St. Mark's Square, dominated by the Byzantine domes and gold mosaics of St. Mark's Basilica, the Gothic Doge's Palace and the freestanding Campanile, whose top gives a panorama over the rooftops and lagoon. The Grand Canal winds past faded palazzos in Venetian Gothic and Renaissance styles, busiest with vaporetto and gondola traffic and best photographed from the Rialto and Accademia bridges.

Kyoto was Japan's imperial capital for more than a millennium and preserves an exceptional density of temples, shrines, wooden townhouses and traditional gardens. Many of its sites are UNESCO World Heritage listed, and entire districts retain a historic streetscape.

The city's landmarks range from the gold-leafed Kinkaku-ji pavilion reflected in its pond to the thousands of vermilion torii gates winding up the hillside at Fushimi Inari Shrine. The eastern Higashiyama district preserves stepped lanes of wooden machiya houses leading to the hillside Kiyomizu-dera temple, whose large wooden terrace overlooks the city.

A preserved trading port glowing with silk lanterns along a riverside old town.

Hoi An was a major Southeast Asian trading port between the 15th and 19th centuries, and its remarkably intact old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The architecture blends Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese and European influences in a compact, vehicle-free riverside core of wooden shophouses, assembly halls and a famous covered bridge. Much of it is painted a distinctive weathered yellow.

The capital of Czechia, Prague sits on the Vltava River and is renowned for one of Europe's largest and best-preserved historic centers, a UNESCO World Heritage Site spanning Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque and Art Nouveau architecture.

The city is organized around the river, crossed by the 14th-century Charles Bridge, a pedestrian span lined with Baroque statues that connects the Old Town to the Lesser Town below the castle. On the Old Town Square stand the Gothic Church of Our Lady before Týn and the medieval Astronomical Clock, which draws crowds on the hour.

Known in Basque as Donostia, San Sebastián is an elegant coastal city built around the near-perfect arc of La Concha bay. It is famous for its belle-époque architecture, its beaches and one of the highest concentrations of acclaimed restaurants in the world.

The city curves around La Concha, a sheltered bay of golden sand framed by green headlands and a small island at its center. A balustraded promenade runs the length of the beach, and the bay is best viewed from above at Monte Igueldo to the west or Monte Urgull to the east.