Drive through the countryside of central Portugal, and Monsanto appears almost unexpectedly on the rocky slopes above the surrounding plains. From a distance, it looks like a traditional stone village perched on a mountain. Come closer, though, and the reason Monsanto is so unusual becomes obvious: large granite boulders are part of the village itself.
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| Monsanto is famous for houses built among enormous granite boulders. |
There are villages that are beautiful because of their architecture and others because of their landscape. Zalipie, Poland, is different. Here, ordinary homes, farm buildings, wells, fences, and other objects can become canvases for brightly coloured flowers. Set in the Powiśle Dąbrowskie area of Małopolska, Zalipie is widely known as Poland's “Painted Village.” The colourful decoration is not a modern tourist attraction, but a local folk tradition. It grew from a local folk tradition that has survived for generations and remains part of everyday community life.
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| A traditional wooden house decorated with colourful floral paintings in Zalipie, Poland. |
Just a few kilometres from the popular coastal town of Fethiye, Turkey, hundreds of roofless stone houses cover the hillside. They climb the slopes one after another, their empty windows looking across the valley as if waiting for people who will never return. This is Kayaköy ghost town, one of the most unusual abandoned places in Turkey.
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| The abandoned hillside settlement of Kayaköy near Fethiye in southwestern Turkey. |
A typical structure of the landscape in the Kaiping county of Jiangmen district in Guangdong, China, is the famous multi-storey fortified towers called Diaolou, the Kaiping Towers. These areas include four distinct Kaiping village areas: Sanmenli, Zilicun, Jinjiangli, and the Majianglong village cluster. These areas display a unique combination of Western and 19th-century Chinese architectural styles. Their function was clearly military, but they also displayed remarkable artistic taste, making them one of the area's great tourist attractions today.
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| Kaiping Guangdong |
Ko Panyi, also known as Koh Panyee, the floating island of Thailand, is located in a bay in southern Thailand, in the shadow of vast limestone cliffs; hundreds of huts, shacks, restaurants, and houses form the floating village of Ko Panyi. The sea area here is shallow and calm, allowing fishermen to build homes on the water. More than 360 families and nearly 1,700 people live in Koh Panyee, all of whom are descendants of Toh Baboo and his family and friends who sailed here from Indonesia about 200 years ago. So many people living here today still speak the Indo-Malay language.
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| Ko Panyi - Floating island in Thailand |
Hidden in the hills of Nanjing, China, are three enormous pieces of limestone that were meant to become one of the largest stone monuments e...
