Cultural Wonders and Holidays from Around the World

Cultural wonders and holidays can include all sorts of attractions, from visiting great art galleries or major museums, to memorials of dramatic moments in history, to experiencing unique local traditions.

Cultural itineraries range in style from real adventures to civilised city breaks – everything from walking the Inca trail to Machu Picchu to spending a week visiting the best of Venice's museums and art galleries.

Cultural holidays and trips are available in all countries, but there are some destinations that are classic starting points to build cultural itineraries around – the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat and the Louvre are some of the most obvious. But there are plenty of classic cultural itineraries including more unexpected destinations like Rio for Carnival, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Petra or the Great Wall of China even.

Classic European cultural itineraries could include the British Museum, the Tower of London, Stonehenge and Windsor Castle, the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica, The Pantheon and the Colesseum, Versailles and the Eiffel Tower or the Alhambra, Seville Cathedral and the Prado Museum. In fact Europe is probably the classic cultural itinerary destination because there are just so many sights to interest your average 'culture vulture'.

It's not like North America doesn't have it's sites worth planning a cultural itinerary around either: New Orleans Mardi Gras may sound too much fun to be planning a 'cultural itinerary' around, but it definitely qualifies! New York has a lot to offer in the way of cultural itinerary planning – Lady Liberty, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Natural History Museum and all sorts of interesting architecture. While Washington's cultural itineraries include stops at the White House, the Smithsonian, the Washington Monument, the Pentagon (from the outside) and the Library of Congress.

South America's cultural itineraries include destinations like Easter Island, Cusco, Sucra in Bolivia, Lake Titicaca and of course Machu Picchu. Other cultural itineraries though South America are centred around festivals like Boi Bumba or Holy Week.

Cultural itineraries around Asia often aim for the Great Wall of China and Beijing's Forbidden City, or Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom. But there are all sorts of Asian cultural itineraries to choose from – Japan's Kyoto is a cultural itinerary in itself, as is Hiroshima. Nepal is another destination popular with cultural itinerary travellers, and India has many cultural itinerary options as well. Cultural itineraries may start at the Taj Mahal, then head off down the Ganges, or visit some of the many stupas or temples.

Australia and New Zealand have only young European cultures, so cultural itineraries visiting European style art and architecture are more limited, but what about the ancient cultures that thrived here long before the arrival of Europeans? Uluru has a lot of cultural significance to the aboriginal people of Australia, and is well worthy of being included on Australian cultural itineraries and New Zealand cultural itineraries offer more options than just the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, the Tamaki Maori Village and the Te Papa Tongarewa Museum – cultural itineraries can be anything you make them!