Where in the World? | International Travel News

December 2005 issue

Norman Castle Tower in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, England

October’s photo. . . stumped our readers! For the first time in 2005, no one at all sent in a guess for our “Where in the World?” entry by press time.

Quick, before you read the answer, take a guess!

The photo is the Norman Castle Tower in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, England.

Carl H. Haag of Princeton, New Jersey, sent in the picture, noting, “The 17-degree angle of the list of the tower is three times that of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. By the way, Bridgnorth has a high town and a low town connected by a cliff railroad.”

November 2010 issue

“Make Way for Ducklings,” Moscow, Russia

Go east, young ducks! September’s photo depicts the sculpture “Make Way for Ducklings” by Nancy Schön, based on the popular children’s book by Robert McCloskey. The copy of the sculpture in the photo is located in Novodevichy Park, Moscow, Russia. It was a gift from Barbara Bush to Raisa Gorbechev for "the children of Moscow” in 1991. The original is in the Boston Public Gardens, one of the settings in the story (and, based on the many, many “Boston” answers ITN received, a favorite US destination for our readers).

Fifty-five correct...

November 2016 issue

To Sua Ocean Trench, Samoa

Visitors to Samoa's volcanic island of Upolu most likely have looked down into the To Sua Ocean Trench, the spot shown in our September 2016 mystery photo. Found in the village of Lotofaga, on the south coast of the island, the hole was formed when volcanic seismic activity caused a large part of the ground to fall away.

Swimmers reach the water (almost 100 feet down) by descending a long ladder into the grotto. Inches above the water's surface is a platform from which they can jump. Canals and tunnels feed the trench with water from the South Pacific. Despite visitors'...

February 2015 issue

French Park monument in Casco Viejo, Panama City, Panama

The monument shown in the photo in the December 2014 issue is located in Panama City's Plaza de Francia (French Park), at the tip of Casco Viejo, the city's colonial neighborhood. At the top of the obelisk, built in commemoration of those who died during construction of the Panama Canal, is a rooster, France's national symbol. Smaller monuments, each topped by a bust of a prominent French explorer, surround the obelisk.

The digging of the canal began in 1881 by a French company headed by Ferdinand de Lesseps, a former diplomat who developed Egypt's Suez Canal. In...

March 2015 issue

Ksar in Medenine, Tunisia

In May 1999, the structure pictured in the January 2015 issue suddenly became famous when that year's "Star Wars" movie hit the theaters, as several scenes had been filmed there. The mud-and-stone structure is a ksar, and it's located in Medenine in southeastern Tunisia.

The doorways of the ksar open into vaulted rooms known as ghorfas, once used by Berbers to store large amounts of grain. The multistory ksar also served as a fortification against attacks.

With slight variations in appearance, there are ksars in several locations in southern Tunisia,...

February 2016 issue

Stone Flower, Jasenovac memorial, Slavonia, Croatia

Rising from an open field in an area of eastern Croatia known as Slavonia is the structure pictured in the December 2015 issue, a 79-foot-tall monument known as the Stone Flower. It memorializes the many people who perished in the Jasenovac complex of five concentration camps during WWII. An estimated 77,000 to, possibly, several hundred thousand prisoners — the vast majority Serbs but also Jews, Roma and other non-Catholic minorities — died there at the hands of the Croatian fascist/terrorist Ustaŝa regime.

Twenty years after the end of the war, construction of the...

April 2016 issue

Ha'amonga 'a Maui (trilithon), Tongatapu, Tonga

No one is exactly sure why the stone trilithon pictured in our February 2016 mystery photo was built, but one story says it’s likely that the Ha’amonga ‘a Maui (Burden of Maui) was a gateway to the king’s royal compound. It stands near the village of Niuto¯ua on the island of Tongatapu in the Polynesian kingdom of Tonga. Another theory says the trilithon was built to symbolize the brotherhood of the king’s two sons.

The structure, comprising coral limestone pillars and a crosspiece of beachrock (naturally cemented carbonate beach sand), was built...

May 2016 issue

Casas Colgadas (Hanging Houses), Cuenca, Spain

It is unknown who built the Casas Colgadas, or Hanging Houses (pictured in our March 2016 mystery photo), but the three clifftop wooden structures overhanging the Huécar River in Cuenca, Spain, were built sometime between the 13th and 15th centuries.

Although only three of these medieval buildings still exist, there once were many of these homes overlooking the area. The three that remain have been refurbished several times, most recently during the 1920s. In the 1960s, the houses became home to the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español. One of the buildings also houses a...

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