Potsdam, which lies south-west of Berlin, has a lot to offer visitors, notably its spectacular UFA Film Studio (currently known as the Babelsberg Studio) – the oldest and largest in Europe – the Einstein Tower, designed by architect Erich Mendelsohn, and the city’s unique Dutch Quarter. However, the standout feature of this city is its beautiful, splendid parks and palaces, which led some of them to be listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. We take you on a tour of these fabulous gems, some of which are worthy of the great Versailles itself.

Sanssouci Park – the Jewel in the Crown
Just over a half-an-hour’s ride on public transport from Berlin lies Sanssouci Park, featuring what for many might be termed the German Versailles, which draws thousands of visitors each year. The precinct houses a large number of parks and palaces, each of them more beautiful and surprising than the next. The artificer of this ensemble was Frederick the Great who, in his endeavour to find a place where he could get away from the pomp of the Berlin Court, hit upon this wonderful spot and commissioned what would become an idyllic retreat. The very name of the park is a statement of intent as it reveals the monarch’s penchant for French culture. It is derived from the French term,sans souci,meaning “without worries”.

Among the major landmarks in the park is the Sanssouci Palace, built from 1745 to 1747 and designed by the architect, Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff. Noteworthy areas in this crowning work of the Rococo are the Marble Hall, inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, the delicately ornamented Music Room and the Library, which needless to say contains the works of such French writers as Voltaire, a friend of Frederick the Great, who was also a great admirer of his.

In addition to this fabulous summer palace, the park also features other equally unique landmarks commissioned by Frederick the Great and his successors. One such construction is the Chinese House (Chinesisches Haus), a clover-shaped pavilion of eastern inspiration, which was very much in vogue at the time, the Orangery (Orangerieschloss), with towers affording splendid views over the park, the New Palace (Neues Palais), commissioned by Frederick the Great to commemorate the end of the Seven Years’ War, and the Picture Gallery (Bildergalerie), boasting works by artists of the likes of Correggio, Rembrandt, Rubens, Anthony van Dyck and Antoine Watteau.

Potsdam’s “New Garden”
In the north of Potsdam lies the Neuer Garten (New Garden), another large park of which the highlight is the Jungfernsee lake. A must-visit is the Marmorpalais (Marble Palace), the summer retreat of Friedrich Wilhelm II, featuring a stunningly ornamented interior which has left more than a few visitors awestruck. Also sited here is the Cecilienhof Palace, a rural palace in Tudor style. It went down in history as being the location of the Potsdam Conference, held during the last few months of World War II.

Reopening Babelsberg Park and Palace
After remaining closed for seven decades, Babelsberg Park and Palace is now decked out to welcome visitors. To mark this long-awaited reopening, from 29 April to 15 October an exhibition will be held as a tribute to Prince Hermann Ludwig Heinrich von Pückler-Muskau, a landscape gardener and artificer, among others, of this park and these gardens. The exhibition will be sited in Babelsberg Palace. Built as of 1833 as the summer residence of future Emperor William I and his wife, Augusta, it was designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel according to the stylistic tenets of English Tudor. The large park, for its part, was designed by Peter Joseph Lenné, while in 1840 Prince Pückler-Muskau culminated the work by lending his own touch to the gardens.

Book your Vueling to Berlin and relish your tour of the marvels offered by the city of Potsdam.

Text by Los Viajes de ISABELYLUIS

Photos by Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg

Bilbao BBK has been with us for twelve years now – that’s quite a feat. A well consolidated festival which manages to compete with some all-powerful musical events in Barcelona and Madrid within a similar timeframe. The reason for its success is simple – its lineup of artists has been steadily growing in prestige and popular appeal. BBK, which is held this year from 6 to 8 July 2017, features some awesome names. The lineup of markedly varied musical styles is headed by Depeche Mode, Phoenix, Fleet Foxes, Die Antwoord, The Killers, Two Door Cinema Club, Justice, The Avalanches and Brian Wilson, among others. If you want to attend the concerts, there are still available some 3-Day Tickets and room in the campsite, should you prefer to steer clear of hotels and instead be more adventurous.

One of the hallmarks of this festival is the grounds it is set in. Monte Kobetas (also known as Kobetamendi), is one of the city’s iconic playgrounds. This elevated, forested area affords spectacular views of Bilbao, apart from acting as one of its lungs and a spot where Bilbaines do sport and go for picnics. However, the precinct is off limits to the general public for the duration of BBK, when it is repurposed solely to music. Access to Kobetamendi is a simple matter; in fact, a couple of free bus lines are laid on for the event by the organisers, facilitating access to the festival precinct for all attendees.

Over and above the musical offerings, BBK provides the perfect excuse for getting to know other places in Bilbao, too. Here are a few proposals for early risers eager to explore the city on foot.

The Best “Pintxos”

It’s a cliché, but it’s actually true – if you visit Bilbao, you simply have to eat pintxos more than once. It is an unwritten norm. And, Bilbao happens to have some of the best bars serving up this culinary speciality. To score a bull’s-eye with your pintxos, the best thing is to head for the city’s historic centre, an area crammed with restaurants of tried and tested quality. Four of them we can highly recommend are Gure Toki,Txiriboga,Motrikes and Askao Berri.

A Touch of Art

As luck would have it, BBK coincides with one of the pictorial exhibition highlights of the year, which is still on in the Guggenheim Bilbao, namely Paris, Fin de Siècle, an exhibition showcasing the work of the most prominent late-19th-century French and European painters. It would be unthinkable not to dive into the museum to see paintings by Toulouse-Lautrec, Signac and Redo, among others, before going up to the Kobetamendi precinct to soak up the festival. Oh, and while you’re about it, make sure you don’t miss the museum’s permanent collection, featuring works by the likes of Robert Motherwell, Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, James Rosenquist, Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter.

Power Records – Bilbao’s Temple of Vinyl

When in Bilbao, dropping in on Power Records is almost as important as eating pintxos if you’re a music aficionado.This legendary store has over twenty-five years’ history behind it. Located on Calle Villarías, near the Old Town and the Nervión estuary, this establishment has a mind-blowing selection of vinyls, both second-hand and imported. This is a veritable sanctuary for music lovers hunting for rare records by their favourite groups. Apart from second-hand albums, Power Records is also dedicated to CDs, reissues and the latest releases. So, if that seven-single by Depeche Mode, or a vinyl of “Pet Sounds” by Brian Wilson has been eluding you, you’re probably going to find it here.

Book your Vueling to Bilbao and let yourself be swept away by the music waves of one of the standout festivals in Spain.

Text by Xavi Sánchez Pons

Brussels has a heady cultural agenda where exhibitions andvernissagesare common fare. Some especially interesting spaces have been unveiled there in recent times, augmenting the established ones. Thus, art enthusiasts and culture devotees in general would do well to visit them on a brief getaway.

The first of these is the ADAM (Art & Design Atomium Museum), located in the Atomium, an iconic construction in the Brussels district of Heysel which was built for the 1958 World Fair. ADAM is an art and design centre which showcases a unique collection of plastic furniture and other objects owned by the Belgian artist, Philippe Decelle, who has been collecting these artefacts since the 1970s. And, while you’re in the vicinity of the Atomium, you should make a point of dropping in on the light and sound installation, ID#2016, which runs until 13 November 2016 and forms part of the ID (Innovative Display) programme, a digital art festival which has been operating since 2013.

Another major cultural landmark in Brussels is MIMA (Millennium Iconoclast Museum of Art), located in the enduringly interesting district of Molenbeek. This space revolves around the highly specific, innovative theme of the evolution of contemporary art following the advent of Internet and the emergence of Culture 2.0.

Another highly edifying cultural landmark in Brussels is the Museum of Natural Sciences, famed for its Dinosaur Gallery, and particularly its iguanodons, the skeletons of which were unearthed in 1878 at a mine in Bernissart in southern Belgium. Be sure to also visit the Gallery of Humankind, a unique exhibition unveiled just a year ago which traces the evolution of man and the human body.

It is always a good time to visit the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts, not only because it is one of Belgium’s most dynamic art hubs (it receives an impressive 1 million visitors each year), but for the building itself. Designed by the acclaimed Belgian Art Deco architect, Victor Horta, it is a magnificent specimen of the country’s architectural heritage. An exhibition showcasing 80 sculptures by Pablo Picasso entitled Picasso. Sculptures is due to run here in the next few months – specifically, from 26 October 2016 to 5 March 2017. Organised in conjunction with the Musée Picasso of Paris, the exhibition will feature works expressing the creative power of the innovative Malaga art genius, who used a host of materials and numerous techniques in his sculptures.

Lastly, an area well worth strolling about and which always throws up some novelty is the Parc du Cinquantenaire (“Quincentenary Park”). Located in this park, a case in point is the Horta-Lambeaux Pavilion which showcases the stunning bas-relief known as Human Passions, the crowning work of Jef Lambeaux, sculpted in white Carrara marble. Another interesting venue is Autoworld, featuring the world’s most important automobile collection which this year marks its 30th anniversary.

Ready to discover these offerings in Brussels? Book your Vueling to Brussels here.

Text by Tusdestinos.net

Images by Tusdestinos.net, IRScNB-KBINTh.Hubin (Museum of Natural Sciences) and Visit Brussels (Olivier van de Kerchove)

Brussels may rightly pride itself on having a large number of Art Nouveau buildings, a veritable pole of attraction for anyone visiting the city. Indeed, the Belgian capital was one of the focal points where this art movement emerged in the late-19th- and early-20th century. Art Nouveau ended up permeating all artistic disciplines, from architecture to sculpture, painting, furniture design, jewellery and graphic design, among others.

Modernism, which came to be known as Art Nouveau in France and Belgium, took its first few steps in Brussels in 1893 with the construction of the Tassel House, located at 6 Rue Paul-Emile Janson, designed by the architect Victor Horta. The idea was to then create a new style which involved breaking with the past by leaving behind the historicism which prevailed in architecture at the time and usher in another style which more accurately reflected the modern era. This break led to the rise of two trends in the city – the floral style, with forms inspired by nature, of which Victor Horta was the most prominent exponent, and the geometric, as championed mainly by the architect and designer, Paul Hankar.

The advent of this movement coincided with a time of growth in the city, when such districts as Schaerbeek, Etterbeek, Ixelles and Saint-Gilles were in the throes of urban renewal, so that many of the houses that went up in those areas were imbued with the new style. Some 500 buildings from that period have survived to the present.

The Major Landmarks

Among the must-see gems of Art Nouveau in Brussels are, in the first instance, the four buildings known collectively as the“Major Town Houses of Victor Horta in Brussels”,all of which were designated World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. They are as follows:

Tassel House. As mentioned above, it is regarded as the first manifestation of Art Nouveau in Brussels, as well as one of the first in the world to open up a new direction in contemporary architecture.

Hôtel Solvay. Located at 224 Avenue Louise, it is possibly one of the standout buildings of Belgian architecture. Its facade reveals the presence of glass, iron and natural stone, Victor Horta’s favourite materials.

Hôtel van Eetvelde. Edmond van Eetvelde, administrator of the Congo Free State, commissioned Victor Horta to design this town house with a view to providing a modern space for entertaining his visitors. Located at 4 Avenue Palmerston, it is striking for the innovative distribution of its interior spaces and for the stained-glass and mosaic ornamentation.

Maison & Atelier Horta. Converted into what is now the Horta Museum, this was the home of Victor Horta, built from 1898 to 1901. It comprises two independent buildings in that each has its own style, but they were conceptualised as a unified whole and are interconnected.

Another building that should feature on your itinerary through the Art Nouveau landmarks of Brussels is the Comics Art Museum. Built in 1906, apart from from being a compulsory place of pilgrimage for devotees of the ninth art, it is a magnificent example of Art Nouveau, the work of the iconic architect of the time in this city, Victor Horta.

Also make a point of visiting the Musical Instruments Museum, designed by the architect Paul Saintenoy and originally built as the Old England department store. And, wander down Rue Saint-Boniface, where you will come across five buildings designed by the architect Ernest Blérot at number 15, 17, 19, 20 and 22. And, lastly, we recommend you head for 71 Rue Defacqz, where you can admire the Paul Hankar House.

Now that you have some of the keys to discovering Art Nouveau in Brussels, book your Vueling here and get ready to enjoy it all.

Text by Los Viajes de ISABELYLUIS

Images by mertxe iturrioz, Arco Ardon , William Murphy , Steve Cadman, J. Miers