Isn’t intelligent voice radio something special? We recall a moment when it really seemed that Martin Luther might open the door and ask if he might drop in for a cuppa.
-
hidden europe
Slow travel to Europe's off-beat places
![]()
Welcome to hidden europe. We promise a fresh perspective on well trodden trails, and a cool look at undiscovered corners.
01
Good travel writing
Our brief is Europe wide, and we criss-cross the continent to bring our readers some of Europe’s very best travel writing. We approach every topic with passion, insight, conviction and authority.
02
Offbeat places
We invite you to look beyond the usual tourist trails — or, if you prefer, stay at home, take out an atlas and enjoy our enthusiasm for the offbeat, the eclectic and the everyday.
03
Value driven
hidden europe is a curated collection of words in print and online that has, over two decades, celebrated European
lives and landscapes as part of the publishers’ wider commitment to promote liberal values and mindsets.
#EscapeTheHype
hidden europe aims at discovering the exotic in the everyday. The places we feature are unhyped and unsung yet full of interest. If you want to understand Europe's rich cultural diversity, this is the site for you.
#SlowTravel
hidden europe attends as much to the journey as to the destination. We take the train to Belarus and the ferry to Iceland. And the prose is as unhurried as the journeys it describes.
#StayCurious
We feature genuinely out-of-the-way places. Where we touch down on somewhere more mainstream, the perspective on the place is unconventional. And we never present places merely as points of consumption.
Explore hidden europe
Click on the sketch-map below to search for articles relating to your favourite country (on some devices you will see a list of country names instead). Yet no map is perfect, and for countries not shown on the interactive map — and to explore topics, regions or place names — just use the search box below the map.
- Albania
- Andorra
- Austria
- Belarus
- Belgium
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- Cyprus
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Estonia
- France
- Finland
- Georgia
- Germany
- Greece
- Hungary
- Iceland
- Ireland
- San Marino
- Italy
- Kosovo
- Latvia
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Macedonia
- Malta
- Moldova
- Monaco
- Montenegro
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Russian Federation
- Serbia
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Turkey
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom
Latest full-length
additions
We regularly make the full version of texts available that were published in hidden europe magazine.
On average we'll add one article every two weeks. Other articles are available as an excerpt on this website.
hidden europe 22
If Mary Shelley's judgement is to be trusted, the Moselle possesses only "an inferior beauty". Which is a bit harsh on a valley that hidden europe views as one of the finest in all Europe. The Moselle valley boasts Karl Marx's birthplace, a village called Schengen and much more besides!
hidden europe 52
This is at one level the story of a renegade monk and a runaway nun. But it's also the wider story of the Reformation in Saxony. Join us as we explore Torgau, a town on the banks of the River Elbe in eastern Germany which played second fiddle to Wittenberg in the Reformation. It is 500 years since Martin Luther kicked off a movement which was to divide the Catholic Church.
hidden europe 5
The Polish city of Wroclaw carries a flame kindled in a territory hundreds of miles away to the east.
hidden europe 34
Kazan, with its gleaming new developments and clean streets, is the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan. Laurence Mitchell, a long-standing writer for hidden europe, introduces us to a part of Europe that has deeply Islamic roots.
hidden europe 67
Glitzy casinos and gilded statues tell of Batumi's ambitions to become the Dubai of the Black Sea. But the Georgian city curates an important cultural legacy as the supposed home of the Golden Fleece. Guest contributor Laurence Mitchell slips over the border from Turkey into Georgia to explore Batumi.
hidden europe 40
The province of Racha in Georgia nudges up against the Caucasus Mountains, and boasts some fabulous scenery. Oni is tucked away in the mountains and doesn't get a lot of visitors. Those that do come are often from Israel. Guest contributor Laurence Mitchell escorts us to a lost synagogue in the hills.
hidden europe 63
Laurence Mitchell takes us the Bulgarian–Turkish borderlands to discover the tombs of Thracian kings and upstart beach resorts which wait in vain for guests. First stop is Malko Tarnovo, a former mining town tucked away in the forests just north of the border.
hidden europe 60
Driving the spinal road which runs the length of South Uist can be a melancholic or an uplifting experience. Few Hebridean islands evoke such mixed responses. In this article, we explore South Uist and find an island of delicate beauty.
hidden europe 53
The Swedish island of Gotland has a rich variety of rural landscapes ranging from luxuriant hay meadows through ancient woodlands to parched limestone terraces. In Gotland, and also in neighbouring Fårö, the landscape is at its most performative when it reaches the sea.
hidden europe 15
Capture the atmosphere of one of Europe's most magical landscapes with our account of two communities in the Lofoten islands in northern Norway. Nusfjord is an old fishing station that has reinvented itself through tourism. Meanwhile, the tiny hamlets that cling to the edges of Reinefjord teeter on the brink of extinction.
Latest and popular
We have published 70 issues of hidden europe travel magazine and over 500 issues of our electronic newsletter called Letter from Europe. Enjoy a selection of articles and blog posts below.
Four hours drive east of Reykjavík, the Fjallabak nature reserve is home to no one, but lies deep in the hearts of many. Here in the hills of Iceland, the seasonal transients arrive in June, helping prepare the simple accommodation to welcome summer hikers. Katie Featherstome describes a season at Hrafntinnusker, a remote mountain hut on the hiking trail known as the Laugavegur.
Östersund is the only town of any size in the Swedish province of Jämtland. It’s a planned community, created as a garrison town and commercial centre in the late 18th century. We stop off in this likeable community on the east shore of Lake Storsjön.
We are quietly in awe of how the editors and publishers ever managed to bring The Coastal Atlas of Ireland to print. This is a magnificent volume, one that draws on geography, geology and cultural studies to present an encyclopaedic account of Ireland’s coastline.
There are some small populated islands off the coast of Sicily which have never recorded a single COVID infection. And, by comparison with many European countries, Iceland has consistently shown low incidence rates.
We are in search of the one-time capital city of a forgotten republic. From the turn-off on the Murmansk highway, it is 150 km of easy driving, skirting dozens of lakes, to reach the small community which in 1919 proclaimed its status as the capital of the Republic of Uhtua.