Love it or hate it, Paris is without question one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Trust me, I’ve been living here for 5+ years now, and I’m yet to run out of breathtaking sights and flowery cafés to discover. There’s just one major downside—other than dealing with the hellish French bureaucracy and …

Let’s cut right to the chase: yeah, that headline is a bold claim. Visiting 100+ medieval European towns takes years of obsessive travel, and a borderline-nerdy passion for Gothic history that’d make most big-brained Oxford scholars jealous. I’m no prof, but I’ve always loved getting lost in the shadowy alleys of a 15th-century walled town. …

From the fairytale castles that look like they’ve been cropped straight out of a storybook scene, to the cobbled streets lined with half-timbered houses and quirky shops, to the beautiful, ornate architecture of the medieval cathedral in the town center: Nothing says ‘magical’ quite like a European village frozen in time (in the best possible …