For families with children, this is an ideal destination to explore. It features an assortment of botanical exhibits and animals, including fossils and well-preserved creatures that will keep the whole family engaged.

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.

Grotta Mangiapane is the biggest cave of the group Scurati's Caverns. Scurati is a little village with very ancient origins, as the numerous finds happened here can demonstrate. The cave takes its name from the family Mangiapane, who lived here for more than a century, indeed it hosts a very peculiar rural agglomeration composed of little squared houses. Totally different epochs merge together in this unique place. During Christmas period, Grotta Mangiapane hosts a big event called “Living Nativity”, an event where the agro-pastoral life comes alive with some 160 performers, including artists and craftsmen from all over Sicily.