Malta

Malta is one of those places that seems too small to contain its own history, and yet here it is - a tiny archipelago in the middle of the Mediterranean with megalithic temples that predate the Egyptian pyramids by a thousand years. The Phoenicians came, the Romans came, the Arabs gave the language its Semitic roots, the Normans took over, and then the Knights of St. John turned the islands into one of the most fortified places on Earth.

The result is a country roughly the size of a large city that packs in more UNESCO World Heritage sites per square kilometer than almost anywhere else. Valletta, the capital, was built by the Knights after the Great Siege of 1565 and remains a Baroque jewel. The Maltese language is the only Semitic language written in Latin script, and people here switch between Maltese and English mid-sentence without thinking twice. The water is absurdly clear, the summers are long, and the entire country feels like an open-air museum with a beach attached.