hidden europe

Autumn colours and an encounter with an improbable cultural minority on the shores of a lake in Lithuania. Guest contributor Laurence Mitchell visits the Karaim of Trakai.

Mishar Tatars and Lipka Tatars have been quick to assimilate into the communities to which they migrated. We discover how they moved through the Baltic region, settling in Lithuania and Finland, with some moving on to Sweden and the United States of America.

Lipka Tatars settled in the rural region south of Vilnius in the 14th century, and their descendants still reside in villages in north-east Poland, western Belarus and southern Lithuania. They are a Muslim minority in a region of Europe which is often incorrectly perceived as being homogeneously Christian. We report on Baltic Islam.

Finland's Ox Road is one of northern Europe's ancient highways. It skirts lakeshores, crosses gravelly eskers, weaves round moraines and links some of Finland's oldest settlements.

Barga is quintessential small town Italy. And Aristo's, the bar and café in the middle of Barga, is the quintessential bar - a spot that is amiable, intimate and safe. Guest author Adam J Shardlow lingers in Aristo's and finds a rich vein of artistic and musical life in the Tuscan town.

UNESCO's World Heritage List includes many citations which showcase former mining activities. The extractive industries have led to the development of some of Europe's most distinctive cultural landscapes. But the recent addition of a gold mining site in Romania to the list sparks tensions between conservation and economic interests.

A 1924 essay by Joseph Roth on an unsung railway station in Berlin fired our imagination and inspired us to take the train to Gleisdreieck - an elevated station that in Roth's day looked down on a tangled maze of railway lines and sidings. Nowadays, nature is reclaiming the industrial landscapes of yesteryear.

Look for the tell-tale Pentecostal dove that marks out the small chapels dedicated to the Holy Spirit. They are found across the Azores, each chapel the hub of a social network that underpins Azorean Catholicism.

Think of writers who are intimately associated with a particular city: Kafka and Prague, Joyce and Dublin, Svevo and Trieste... or Pessoa and Lisbon. Pessoa did for Lisbon something which few other leading writers have done for their home city. He wrote a guide for tourists visiting the city. With Pessoa to hand, Iain Bamforth sets out to explore the Portuguese capital.

For Odesa writer Issac Babel, his home town was 'the most charming city of the Russian empire'. For many visitors today, Odesa is one of the most striking Black Sea ports. Join us as we head up the Potemkin Steps to discover Odesa.

We take a look at a European city which has often styled itself as a place of refuge. Geneva has long taken a stand on human rights. So join us as we explore the many sides of Geneva, the Swiss city that turns out to have impeccable radical credentials.

Europe's city squares are being radically reshaped by the arrival of mass tourism. Thus far, Poznan's beautiful central square has resisted the pressure for change. It remains essentially a place for the locals. But change is surely in the offing.

The last of the Soviet Union's great ocean liners outlived the Soviet Union. The MS Aleksandr Pushkin made her first visit to Tilbury (in the lower reaches of the River Thames) in April 1966. For over half a century, this classic ship was a regular visit to Tilbury. Renamed the MS Marco Polo, she arrived in Tilbury the very last time in March 2020.

It was eighty years ago this spring that Umberto Nobile embarked on the airship Italia. His destination? The North Pole! Read about an expedition that was to prompt the biggest rescue effort in the history of polar exploration.full article available in pdf format

Hoek van Holland is a liminal spot, a place not quite of the land and not quite of the sea. We make time for a Dutch town through which generations of sea travellers have passed but few lingered.

The port city of Genoa commanded huge influence on account of its mercantile acumen and its early schemes for the management of public debt, which paved the way for modern banking. Today the city of St George still has the face of business.

The fear of being murdered on a train was once so great that affluent country squires donned old clothes to travel with the crowds in third class. It was, they judged, safer than travelling in splendid isolation in first class. We take a look at how the railway carriage changed through time.

Join us as we visit an archipelago of islands in the Atlantic off the southwest coast of England. The Isles of Scilly are a remarkable outpost - lush, verdant and, at their best, almost Caribbean in demeanour.

The Ertholm Islands (literally 'Pea Islands') are the easternmost fragments of Danish territory, even further east than Bornholm. Just two islands in this small archipelago are populated: Christiansø and Frederiksø. In the 19th century, Frederiksø served as a place of exile - a prison island.

The Anglesey Arms by the quayside has long since closed. And it's been many a long year since the last ferry left Dún Laoghaire for Britain. But this erstwhile port just down the coast from Dublin still has something of the elegance and grace that it had in the heyday of the packet steamers.

The shipyards in Szczecin once built some the world's finest and fastest passenger liners. But today the cranes are silent, and the city of Szczecin is struggling to define its role in modern Poland. The Baltic port city is a gritty place, and all the more interesting for that.

In Frombork, a tiny port on Poland's Baltic coast, the ferry terminal has closed down for the winter. A lone fisherman sits at the end of the pier and looks out over the lagoon to Russia. But the town where Nicolaus Copernicus lived and worked turns out to have a rare off-season appeal.

Some commentators say it is the most interesting thing taking place in the Jewish world today. The renaissance of Jewish life and culture in Poland is remarkable. In this feature, we take the pulse of Jewish Warsaw.

The humblest homes in many villages in the Carpathians are built of wood. So, too, are the grandest buildings - almost invariably the church. Wood has its own benign beauty, and it is the carrier of tradition. We explore the wooden architecture of that part of the Carpathian region which lies to the east of the High Tatras.

Join us to discover the Polish village of Wojnowo which was created from nothing almost 200 years ago. A community of devout Russians arrived on foot and settled on the reedy banks of the River Krutynia.

Not far from the Czech border, in the southernmost part of Polish Silesia, lies the monastery of Krzeszów (formerly known by its German name of Grüssau). It was to this quiet spot that manuscripts and books from Berlin were sent for safe keeping in the Second World War. These days, pilgrims make their way to the monastery as a place of prayer.

Tumbling off the train and riding the trolleybus over to the other side of the river is a fine introduction to Vitebsk. The Belarusian city is precise and orderly: Swiss efficiency colliding with Soviet style. And at the annual Slavianski Bazaar, Vitebsk is a city that knows how to party.

The tides in the Mawddach estuary never come too early. Nor too late. The rain never beats too hard on the road to Abergwesyn. hidden europe editor Nicky Gardner celebrates the communities in rural Wales where she once lived.

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Baltic port of Kaliningrad found itself strangely isolated from the rest of Russia. Hemmed in by the European Union, the city of Kaliningrad is rethinking its role in the modern world. It is a remarkable city in a remarkable region.

Amid the parks and palaces of Potsdam (near Berlin) is an area known as the Neuer Garten ('New Garden'). For almost fifty years, part of it was an extraordinary 'forbidden city' - a place reserved for the Russian military and the KGB. hidden europe explores this area through the eyes of one woman.