Art is reshaping the way culturally curious travellers explore the world.
Beyond the major museums and familiar capitals, sculpture parks, remote islands and artist-designed environments are becoming destinations in their own right. From the Sicilian landscape to the Qatari desert, these are extraordinary places where art offers a compelling reason to travel.
Cretto di Burri, Sicily, Italy
Built over the ruins of Gibellina, a town destroyed by the 1968 Belice earthquake, Alberto Burri’s monumental land artwork covers 86,000 square metres. Its vast white concrete blocks preserve the original street plan, allowing visitors to walk through a haunting memorial shaped by absence and memory. It is one of Italy’s most powerful encounters between art, landscape and history.
Jupiter Artland, Scotland
Set within meadow and woodland outside Edinburgh, Jupiter Artland transforms a country estate into an immersive contemporary sculpture park. More than 30 permanent works by artists including Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley and Charles Jencks are integrated into the landscape, alongside temporary exhibitions and creative programmes. It is worth visiting for the sense of discovery, with artworks gradually revealed along winding paths.
East-West/West-East by Richard Serra, Qatar
In Qatar’s Brouq Nature Reserve, four towering weathering-steel plates cut across more than a kilometre of desert. Created by Richard Serra in 2014, East-West/West-East changes with the light, distance and surrounding terrain. Its remote location makes the journey part of the experience, offering a rare opportunity to see monumental sculpture in direct conversation with an immense, seemingly untouched landscape.
Salvador Dalí’s House, Portlligat, Spain
Salvador Dalí lived and worked in this labyrinthine waterfront home for 40 years, gradually transforming a fisherman’s hut into an eccentric reflection of his imagination. Preserved rooms reveal his studio, private living spaces, unusual objects and surreal decorative details. For admirers of Dalí, it offers something a gallery cannot: an intimate view of the environment that shaped both his art and daily life.
Giardino dei Tarocchi, Tuscany, Italy
Niki de Saint-Phalle’s fantastical sculpture garden brings the 22 Major Arcana of the tarot to life through monumental figures covered in mirrors, ceramics and vividly coloured mosaics. Developed over more than two decades, the garden draws inspiration from architecture, mythology and esoteric symbolism. It is playful, theatrical and deeply personal, revealing an artist’s imagination on an architectural scale.
James Turrell’s The Dome, Aarhus, Denmark
Opened at ARoS Aarhus Art Museum in June 2026, As Seen Below – The Dome is James Turrell’s 100th Skyspace and his most ambitious to date. The monumental installation uses controlled light, colour and an opening to the sky to challenge visual perception. Best experienced around twilight, it turns the simple act of looking upwards into something meditative and extraordinary.
