Compare 576 Travel Destinations

Stone Town is the old urban core of Zanzibar — a labyrinth of coral-stone alleys built over 1,000 years of Swahili, Arab, Persian, Indian, and Portuguese trade, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. The intricately carved wooden doors (over 500 documented), the white-washed House of Wonders, the East African slave market memorial at the Anglican cathedral, Forodhani Gardens night food market, and the modest house where Freddie Mercury was born in 1946 are all within a 1-square-kilometre warren you can only navigate on foot. Most visitors combine Stone Town with the spice plantations inland and the white-sand east-coast beaches at Paje, Jambiani, and Nungwi.

Northern Morocco's port city stares across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain (14km away). The medina + Kasbah climb the hill above the harbor; Cap Spartel marks where the Atlantic and Mediterranean meet, with the Caves of Hercules just below. International Zone era (1923-56) and a literary bohemian past — Bowles, Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg all lived here. The Al Boraq high-speed train (Africa's only) connects to Casablanca in 2h10m. Easier ferry hop to Tarifa than most realize.

Tunisia's capital is where the Arab Spring began — where Mohamed Bouazizi's December 2010 self-immolation in Sidi Bouzid triggered a revolution that toppled Ben Ali and spread across the Arab world. But Tunis's layered history runs far deeper: Carthage's ruins 15 km north, the UNESCO Medina of Tunis (one of the Arab world's finest, with Ez-Zitouna Mosque at its heart), the Bardo's extraordinary Roman mosaics (world's largest collection), and Sidi Bou Said's blue-and-white clifftop village above the bay.