The Megaron, Athens' Concert Hall, was inaugurated in 1991 and it now houses four halls offering a variety of musical performances. It is famous for its top-notch spectacles and an impressive acoustic.

The beguinages of Flanders and the Netherlands are always oases of calm and stillness, where you might still expect to see an old beguine mumbling her prayers in a doorway. Two of Ghent’s three beguinages have been included on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Although the Old St Elizabeth Beguinage, in Begijnhofdries in Ghent, is no longer enclosed by a wall, making it simply part of the city, it still has a unique atmosphere. Today the Old St Elizabeth Beguinage is known as ‘holy corner’, a place of religious tolerance, because it has no less than three different churches: one is Roman Catholic, one is Orthodox and the other is Protestant. From bleachfield to orchard This open beguinage grew into something of a ‘beguine city’ in the 13th century, with a church, the ‘Grootjuffer’s House’, an infirmary, a chapel, more than a hundred houses for beguines, a bleachfield (a field where linen was laid out to bleach) and an orchard. After the French Revolution, with increasing industrialisation, the inhabitants moved to their new beguinage in Sint-Amandsberg in 1873.

Named after Erechtheus, king of Athens and foster son of Athena, the Erechtheion is an ancient Greek temple on the north side of the Acropolis dedicated to both Athena and Poseidon. This intricate temple was designed to accommodate the radically uneven ground on the site and to avoid disturbing sacred shrines like the altars to Poseidon, the sacred olive tree, a well containing sea water, the tomb of Kekrops, and the Pandrosion sanctuary.