The address 351 High Street sits on Edinburgh's Royal Mile in the heart of the Old Town, directly opposite St Giles' Cathedral and a short walk from both the Castle and the Scottish Parliament. Rather than a single attraction, the spot is best known as one of the most widely used meeting points on the Royal Mile, where a number of operators gather visitors for guided walking tours of the Old Town, ghost and history walks and trips up to Edinburgh Castle. The surrounding stretch of the High Str.....

Threaded between the great canals of central Amsterdam, the Nine Streets form one of the most charming shopping districts in the city, a compact grid of narrow lanes packed with independent boutiques, vintage shops, galleries and cafes. The area takes its name from the nine little streets that link the Prinsengracht, Keizersgracht, Herengracht and Singel canals. The streets lie within the famous ring of seventeenth-century canals, the Grachtengordel, a World Heritage area built during the Dutch.....

At the heart of the historic Malay-Muslim quarter known as Kampong Glam, Arab Street is a vibrant thoroughfare whose shophouses, textile merchants and the great golden dome of a nearby mosque conjure the atmosphere of a Middle Eastern bazaar in the middle of Singapore. The street takes its name from the Arab traders who settled in the area in the early nineteenth century, when this district was set aside for the Malay community and for Muslim merchants from across the region and beyond, and it g.....

A substantial tree-lined principal boulevard running through the central business and shopping district of Lisbon, the Avenida da Liberdade extends for approximately one and a half kilometres between the Praca dos Restauradores at the southern end and the great Marques de Pombal traffic circle at the northern end. The avenue has been the principal central commercial axis of the Portuguese capital continuously since its original completion in 1886 and remains one of the most prestigious individua.....

Bachelors Walk runs along the north bank of the River Liffey in central Dublin, a quayside street stretching from O'Connell Bridge westward toward the Ha'penny Bridge and Ormond Quay. It takes its name from a developer who built up the street, with records of the name reaching back to the early eighteenth century, when it was set out as an extension of the riverside quays from the 1670s. In its early days the street was home to merchants and grand terraced houses, and its riverside position mad.....

Carved out of the medieval street pattern in the seventeenth century to provide an approach to the new Palazzo Barberini, Piazza Barberini sits at the foot of the Quirinal Hill and has become one of the busiest small squares in central Rome. The space takes its name from the powerful family whose palace dominates the corner above. The piazza is best known for two fountains by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, both commissioned by the Barberini in the 1640s. The Fontana del Tritone in the centre shows a mus.....

Batthyany Square (Batthyany ter) is a historic public square on the Buda bank of the Danube in Budapest, occupying a prime riverside position directly opposite the Hungarian Parliament Building on the Pest side of the river. The square is one of the most important transport interchanges and one of the most attractive historic squares of the Buda side, and offers what is widely regarded as the finest head-on view of the great neo-Gothic Parliament building across the water. The square is named a.....

Few streets carry as much weight in modern German history as Bernauer Strasse, the long Berlin thoroughfare that runs along the former boundary between the districts of Wedding in the West and Mitte in the East. When the wall went up overnight on 13 August 1961, the border was drawn so that the apartment buildings on the southern side stood in East Berlin while their front pavement lay in the West. The result was some of the most dramatic and tragic scenes of the divided city: in the first days .....

Jutting into the harbour at the centre of Stockholm, the peninsula of Blasieholmen has long ranked among the most prestigious quarters of the Swedish capital, a compact wedge of land between the bustle of Norrmalm and the water facing the island of Skeppsholmen. In earlier times it was a separate island given over to shipyards, mills and naval stores, but reclamation gradually tied it to the mainland and grand building filled it during the city's expansion. The peninsula is dominated by the Nati.....

Lined with neighbourhood trattorias, small shops and the occasional clerical outfitter, Borgo Pio is one of the most atmospheric small streets in central Rome, running for a few hundred metres between the Tiber and the walls of Vatican City just north of Saint Peter Square. The name and the layout date from the sixteenth century, when Pope Pius IV reorganised the surrounding quarter. The Borgo quarter, the medieval district that grew up beside the Vatican to serve the steady flow of pilgrims to.....