Cities
Cities That Feel Unreal
Walk out of the vaporetto at Burano, near Venice, and the first thing your eye does is argue with itself. Every house — pistachio, cobalt, marigold — is painted a different shade by law, so fishermen returning through Adriatic fog can find their own front door. It works. It also makes the whole island look like a child's drawing rendered at 1:1 scale.
Some cities feel unreal because of geometry (Šibenik's cascading limestone), some because of weather (Hallstatt in November mist), and some because they were imagined into existence in defiance of common sense (Wieliczka's underground chapel hewn from rock salt). What follows is a short, unsentimental field guide to eight of them.
We've kept the entries narrow on purpose. No 'top 50' clickbait, no inflatable superlatives — just the places where one of our correspondents stood still for a full minute and forgot to take a photograph.
Late afternoon light, looking east. Photo by our regional correspondent.
Why This Place Matters
Burano (Italy), Chefchaouen (Morocco), and Jodhpur (India) belong to a small club of cities defined almost entirely by paint. In each case the color was practical first — anti-mosquito indigo lime-wash in Jodhpur, Jewish-quarter blue in Chefchaouen — and only became aesthetic by accident. The aesthetic outlasted the practicality.
Other cities on this list earn 'unreal' through scale rather than color. Shibam in Yemen has 500-year-old mud-brick towers nine stories high, the so-called Manhattan of the Desert. Coober Pedy in South Australia built itself underground because surface temperatures hit 50°C and opal miners refused to leave.
What unites them is that they were not designed for visitors. Their strangeness is a side effect of weather, religion, war, geology, or fishing — never of a tourism office. That is the part we keep coming back for.
A Short History
Wieliczka Salt Mine outside Kraków has been producing table salt since the 13th century. Miners, having nothing else to do in the dark, started carving chapels — including the chandeliered Chapel of St. Kinga, 101 meters below ground, where every crystal in the lighting was cut from rock salt by hand.
Chefchaouen's blue dates only to the 1930s, when Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Europe expanded an older tradition of mezuzah-blue door frames into entire facades. Most of that community has since left for Israel; the paint stayed.
Burano's house-color rule is medieval in spirit but municipal in practice: today you must apply to the local government and they assign you a color from the approved palette of your block. Repainting it 'cream because cream is tasteful' is not an option.
What You Will Actually See
Burano, Italy — 40 minutes by vaporetto line 12 from Fondamente Nove. Visit the leaning campanile of San Martino, eat bussolà biscuits at Panificio Garbo, and walk the Fondamenta della Giudecca side for the best house-color compositions.
Chefchaouen, Morocco — the Plaza Uta el-Hammam at sunset, the Ras El Maa waterfall washing area where local women still rinse laundry, and the Spanish Mosque on the hill above town for the panoramic blue.
Wieliczka Salt Mine, Poland — book the Tourist Route (about 3.5 km, 2 hours). The Chapel of St. Kinga and the Weimar Chamber's salt lake are the two unmissable rooms.
Shibam, Yemen (when travel reopens), Hallstatt, Austria (arrive by ferry from Hallstatt-Bahnhof for the postcard angle), and Coober Pedy, Australia — where you can sleep in the underground Desert Cave Hotel and visit the Serbian Orthodox Church carved into the rock.
The kind of detail you only notice on the second visit.
Interesting Facts
A few quick notes on cities that feel unreal before the section below.
These are the details our correspondents most often get asked about by readers planning a trip.
Practical Information
Burano is a day trip but goes very quiet after the last vaporettos leave around 8 pm. If you can stay one night at Casa Burano (a 'scattered hotel' across several painted houses), the dawn light is the reason to bother.
Chefchaouen is three hours by CTM bus from Tangier or Fez. Avoid Friday afternoons when many shops close for prayer. The paint is renewed before Ramadan, so spring visits get the most saturated color.
Wieliczka entry is timed and tickets sell out in summer — book online. Temperature underground stays at 14°C year-round; bring a jacket even in August.
Hallstatt restricts day-tripper buses; arrive by train via Attnang-Puchheim and take the small ferry across the lake to the village. The 'photo bridge' on Seestraße is busy from 9 am to 4 pm; come at 7 am.
Interesting Facts
- Wieliczka's underground Chapel of St. Kinga is 54 m long and took three miners 67 years to carve, working in shifts after their salt quotas.
- Burano lace was so valuable in the 16th century that Venetian law forbade lacemakers from emigrating; offenders' families could be imprisoned.
- Chefchaouen's blue is officially a mix of slaked lime and natural indigo or copper-sulphate pigment; it is repainted by residents twice a year.
- Coober Pedy supplies roughly 70% of the world's opals and around 60% of its 1,800 residents live in underground 'dugout' homes.
- Shibam, founded in the 3rd century AD, is the world's oldest example of vertical urban planning and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Most travellers walk straight past this corner. Stop and look up.
How To Visit
Venice → Burano: Vaporetto 12 from Fondamente Nove, about €9.50 single, every 30 min. Combine with Torcello (next stop) for the Byzantine mosaics of Santa Maria Assunta.
Fez → Chefchaouen: CTM bus, 4 hours, around 80 MAD. The bus station is a 20-minute walk uphill from the medina; grands taxis fill that gap for 10 MAD.
Kraków → Wieliczka: Lajkonik bus from Kurniki Street or train to Wieliczka Rynek-Kopalnia, 25 minutes. Avoid the unmarked 'guides' outside the entrance — buy at the official ticket office.
Hallstatt is 3 hours from Salzburg by train + ferry. The ÖBB SparSchiene fares drop to €19 if booked two weeks ahead.
Final Thoughts
These cities don't need defending and they don't need crowds. If you go to Burano, buy a lace handkerchief from Emilia (the last shop still doing real punto in aria needle lace, not imported imitation). If you go to Chefchaouen, hire Mohammed Aabbou as a guide — he is a former teacher and corrects your historical assumptions politely.
The thing 'unreal' cities have in common is that they were built by people solving a specific problem — cold fog, hot sun, dry rock, religious dietary law — and ended up accidentally beautiful. The beauty is a residue.
Walk slowly. Buy bread. Talk to whoever opens the door.
If you read this article and noticed something we got wrong, please write to us. Reader corrections shape what we publish next.
Elena Marchetti
Regional correspondent for WIGO Trips. Writes about overlooked places and quiet histories.