The wait is nearly over for the Pinault Collectionâs hotly anticipated museum in the French capital.
A giant concrete cylinder by Tadao Ando dominates the frescoed rotunda of the Pinault Collectionâs soon-to-open Bourse de Commerce site. (Photo: Marc Domage)
When museums finally reopen in Paris, art buffs can look forward to more than a refurbished Louvre, which has been undergoing renovations since lockdown measures closed its doors in October. Just a five-minute walk from the onetime royal palace is the new Bourse de Commerce â Pinault Collection, the latest project by French luxury-goods magnate François Pinault. A sister to Pinaultâs two private museums in Venice, it inhabits the Bourse de Commerce, a circular 19th-century commodities exchange topped by an iron-and-glass dome.
Thrill-seekers can get back to nature on an off-road journey in the Scottish Highlands.
Wildnis team members setting up camp amid a field of mountain grass. (Photo courtesy of Wildnis)
Adventurous types looking for a stylish new way to experience Scotland’s great outdoors should pencil in a journey with Wildnis, which is launching the first of its luxury camp-based expeditions in the Scottish Highlands this month. Founded by former British military officers, the company employs a small fleet of upgraded Land Rover Defenders to transport guests (and the tents they’ll sleep in) to remote off-road locales in the Trossachs and Glen Coe region, where activities will range from scrambling along ridgelines and abseiling down sheer cliffs, to pack-rafting across a secluded loch and sea kayaking off wild beaches. Each evening is spent at a mobile base camp where the day’s exertions are rewarded with drams of single malt and gourmet feasts prepared over an open fire by a Michelin-train
The worldâs fourth-largest island is packed with wonders, and nowhere more so than on its less populated west coast, a region of otherworldly wildlife and bewitching landscapes.
From my vantage point in a small field beside the Avenue of the Baobabs, Madagascarâs iconic trees appear almost cartoonish in the late-afternoon sun, with bulbous trunks and crowns of root-like branches that look like they were drawn by Dr. Seuss. Children race up and down the packed-dirt road that cuts through the grove, laughing as they kick up plumes of red dust in their wake. I share their glee. But mostly what I feel is a sense of wonder. Ten years, after all, is a long time to wait to see a tree.
The capital of the United Arab Emirates has come a long way from its pearling town roots. With a magnificent outpost of the Louvre, head-turning Islamic architecture, and a new cultural park sited on Abu Dhabiâs original settlement, there is plenty here for visitors to admire â and thatâs before they even venture into the fantastical desert on the cityâs doorstep.
The main swimming pool at Qasr al Sarab, Anantaraâs desert resort on the edge of the Rubâ al Khali.
It was the desert that brought me to Abu Dhabi. Specifically, it was a photograph that came over my desk a decade ago of an impossibly picturesque Arabian fortress nestled amid great red dunes at the edge of the Rubâ al Khali, the worldâs largest uninterrupted expanse of sand. The caption identified this vision as Qasr Al Sarab â âPalace of Miragesâ â which, in fact, was not a fortress at all but rather a newly built resort designed to emulate one: a stately confec
For more than a century, the Indonesian island of Belitung has been mined for its tin. But visitors to its boulder-strewn shores will soon discover a wealth of scenic splendor and just-caught seafood to bootânot to mention the comforts of a new five-star beach resort.
Photographs by Christopher P. Hill
Left to right: A view of the beach at Pulau Lengkuas from atop the islandâs 19th-century lighthouse; a covered pathway leading to Sheraton Belitungâs Island Restaurant.
âItâs as beautiful as the Seychelles, but a lot more affordable,â says Frenchman Thierry Bratic as I follow his gaze along the empty beach toward a headland piled with smooth granite boulders. Heâs not the first person to make the comparison with that distant Indian Ocean archipelago; Belitung, situated at the confluence of the South China and Java Seas, has worn the âSeychelles of Indonesiaâ epithet for a while now, especially since its starring role in the hit 2008 Indon