5 Fairytale Places in Europe That Don't Look Real (But Are)

In 1910, a sculptor raised a 14-metre stone god on a cliff above the Italian Riviera. It is still standing there today — open sky, open sea, no fence, no museum. That is where this list ends. Here is where it begins. Today we count down 5 of the most beautiful fairytale settings in Europe — real places, across four countries, where medieval history is not behind glass but literally beneath your feet. From the coloured tower houses of Riomaggiore in the Cinque Terre, to the turquoise harbour of St. Ives in Cornwall England, to the perfectly preserved medieval capital of Tallinn Old Town in Estonia, to the crystal-clear Verzasca River in Lavertezzo Switzerland, and finally to the crown jewel of the Italian Riviera — Monterosso al Mare — this is the Europe most travel guides never show you. Whether you are planning Italy travel, searching for hidden gems in Europe, or looking for the most beautiful villages in Europe for 2025, this list will change where you go next. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱️ CHAPTERS: 0:00 — Introduction 2:09 — #5 Riomaggiore, Italy (Cinque Terre) 4:52 — #4 St. Ives, Cornwall, England 7:58 — #3 Tallinn Old Town, Estonia 11:08 — #2 Lavertezzo, Switzerland (Verzasca Valley) 14:54 — #1 Monterosso al Mare, Italy 18:31 — Final Thoughts ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📍 PLACES FEATURED IN THIS VIDEO: Riomaggiore — Cinque Terre National Park, Liguria, Italy (UNESCO World Heritage Site) St. Ives — Cornwall, England, United Kingdom Tallinn Old Town — Tallinn, Estonia (UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed 1997) Lavertezzo — Verzasca Valley, Canton Ticino, Switzerland Monterosso al Mare — Cinque Terre National Park, Liguria, Italy (UNESCO World Heritage Site) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔔 Subscribe for more hidden corners of Europe that most travellers walk straight past. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #FairytaleEurope #EuropeTravel #CinqueTerre #HiddenGemsEurope #TravelEurope2025