Where tourists seldom tread, part 15: three more UK towns with unsung stories

Our tour of unheralded towns continues with Black Country legends in Dudley, Renaissance-style architecture in Enniskillen and Middlesbrough, birthplace of the Sydney Harbour Bridge

Sète: the seaside town with year-round sunshine in the south of France

Surrounded by canals, a lagoon and the Mediterranean, the port town has fabulous seafood and some quirky cultural traditions

Merchants of Venice: 10 of the city’s most beautiful historic shops

From an elegant apothercary to a jewellers in a baroque salon, these stores all have atmospheric interiors and a history of exquisite craftsmanship

Mardi Gras the Balkan way – alternatives to Venice carnival

In Croatia, Montenegro and Albania, the legacy of Venetian occupation lives on in a series of spectacular carnivals that these days have a local twist

When in Rome … go where the Romans go, not the tourist crowds

The Eternal City’s monuments and museums are busy at the best of times, but there remain myriad treasures to explore that are well off the beaten track

Alternative wonders: why Yemen’s ancient terraces are a supreme human creation

The soil, treasured for centuries, turns steep Yemini slopes into fertile and productive land. Coffee grown here was served at London’s first coffee house in 1652

Alternative wonders: why the stone citadel of Sigiriya in Sri Lanka is my rock of ages

The landscape is not the dead relic of a foregone age. It is a living reminder of how knowledge tailored to the local ecology is essential

Alternative wonders: why Egypt’s Colossi of Memnon are my giants of history

Emerging from the heat shimmer, these two enormous statues in Luxor appear completely otherwordly – like giants in a wheat field

Alternative wonders: why Tibet’s Samye monastery is my spiritual inspiration

The region’s first Buddhist monastery is a complex of chapels and stupa towers from a vast mandala – a symbolic and spiritual representation of the whole universe

A sprawling megacity of multi-level madness: why Chongqing in China is my wonder of the world

This megacity is like Hong Kong on steroids – a vertically sprawling, astonishing urban phenomenon that can only be understood in three dimensions

Dancing horses and a dodgy Venus: why Derbyshire’s Bolsover Castle is my wonder of the world

This is a very English wonder, fusing the arcane symbolism of northern England with then modern ideas from Renaissance Italy

From a feisty goddess to stone phalluses: why Turkey’s Temple of Artemis is my wonder of the world

The temple was an inspiration for countless Greek and Roman temples that followed and is twice the size of the Parthenon

A love letter to Patmos: the most serene of all the Greek islands

Saint John lived in a cave here and wrote about the Apocalypse, but these days the quiet shores of beautiful Patmos nurture happier thoughts

Pottering in the Potteries: exploring the museums and ceramics studios of Stoke-on-Trent

As a new series of The Great Pottery Throwdown hits the screens, an honorary Stokie explores Josiah Wedgwood’s legacy and the six towns – and gets some clay on her hands

My Christmas pilgrimage to Mark Rothko’s Latvia

I took the scenic route to Daugavpils, birthplace of the abstract artist – a world of breathtaking colour, kindness and cold