Dozens of venomous pit vipers slither and coil among the urns, roof beams and potted trees within this bizarre Chinese temple, built in 1850, and sacred to the deity Chro Soo Kong. The snakes – regarded as benevolent spirits – are seen as guardians of the temple.

Stroll around this town full of character, cobbled streets and piazzas, and enjoy the decorous passeggiata along the main street, Via Garibaldi. There are also some good restaurants around the squares and pleasant bars in which to linger over a cool drink. The Diocesan Museum is located in the heart of town and has some fascinating exhibits, including two silver candlesticks and a crucifix gifted by Lord Horatio Nelson.

Valencia welcomes spring with its most colourful and famous festival. Gigantic papier mache monuments, known as fallas, with effigies usually representing celebrities or politicians in a satirical way, are set up on streets and squares throughout the city and burnt to a cinder in spectacular bonfires on the last day of the celebration. The Flower Offering to the Virgen de los Desamparados, when thousands of falleras and falleros in traditional costumes parade through the city, is also a sight to behold.

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.