Certain cities around the world possess an otherworldly quality that makes visitors feel they’ve stepped directly into the pages of a novel or onto a movie set. These extraordinary urban landscapes blend unique architecture, natural settings, and cultural elements to create environments that seem almost too fantastical to exist in reality.
The disorienting sensation of walking through streets that feel imagined rather than built transforms ordinary travel into transportive experiences that linger in memory long after departure. Here is a list of 20 real-world cities that capture the essence of fictional realms, inviting travelers to experience the surreal, the magical, and the extraordinary.
Santorini, Greece
The cascading white buildings of this volcanic island create a mesmerizing contrast against the deep blue Aegean Sea that surrounds it. Sunset transforms the alabaster structures into a canvas of pink and golden hues, creating vistas that feel plucked from a mythological paradise.
The knowledge that you’re walking on the rim of an ancient volcano adds to the surreal quality of a place that seems designed for gods rather than mortals.
Neuschwanstein, Germany
While technically a castle rather than a city, the settlement surrounding this Bavarian masterpiece creates an entire world that directly inspired Disney’s fairy tale castles. The dramatic spires piercing through mountain mist amid alpine forests create a scene straight from Germanic folklore.
Local villages with their timber-framed houses enhance the storybook atmosphere of a region where reality and fantasy have blurred for centuries.
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Chefchaouen, Morocco
The Blue Pearl of Morocco has become famous for the striking indigo hues that coat virtually every wall, door, and staircase in its ancient medina. The monochromatic labyrinth creates a dreamlike environment where mundane urban elements transform into artistic expressions.
Against the backdrop of the Rif Mountains, the azure city creates an immersive environment that feels like walking through someone’s vibrant imagination rather than a centuries-old settlement.
Venice, Italy
This floating city defies conventional urban logic with its maze of canals, absence of roads, and palaces that seem to emerge directly from the water. The carnival traditions, Gothic architecture, and misty lagoon setting have inspired countless fictional works precisely because Venice already feels like fiction made real.
The gradual sinking of the city adds a melancholic poignancy to this place, where normal rules of architecture and city planning have been beautifully abandoned.
Cappadocia, Turkey
The otherworldly landscape of fairy chimneys, cave dwellings, and underground cities creates an environment that feels more like a distant planet than a terrestrial location. Hot air balloons floating above this lunar terrain at dawn enhance the dreamlike quality of terrain shaped by both nature and human ingenuity.
The knowledge that people have continuously inhabited these fantastical rock formations for thousands of years adds historical weight to a setting that otherwise seems purely imaginary.
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Sintra, Portugal
This mountain retreat outside Lisbon features an improbable collection of colorful palaces, mystical gardens, and Moorish ruins emerging from perpetual mist. The vibrant yellows and reds of Pena Palace against the green forest create a scene that seems designed for a fantasy film rather than aristocratic recreation.
The serpentine paths leading through grottos, secret tunnels, and gardens with symbolic artwork enhance the sensation that you’ve entered a realm designed to disorient and enchant simultaneously.
Luang Prabang, Laos
Nestled between two rivers and surrounded by limestone mountains, this ancient royal capital blends Southeast Asian temple architecture with French colonial buildings in a harmonious symphony. Morning mists envelop the town as hundreds of monks in vibrant orange robes process silently through streets collecting alms.
The combination of natural beauty, spiritual practices, and preserved architecture creates a timeless atmosphere that feels removed from the modern world.
Bagan, Myanmar
The plain of Bagan, with over 2,000 Buddhist temples and pagodas scattered across an arid landscape, creates a vista unlike anywhere else on earth. Dawn transforms this archaeological wonderland as hot air balloons drift between ancient spires emerging from the morning mist.
The sheer scale and concentration of these religious structures create an environment that feels like stepping into an ancient civilization preserved from a different era.
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Matera, Italy
This ancient city of cave dwellings carved into pale limestone ravines creates a biblical atmosphere that has made it a popular filming location for religious epics. The Sassi districts, with their stone staircases, cisterns, and rock-hewn churches, represent some of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in human history.
The monochromatic palette and absence of modern architectural elements make it easy to feel transported thousands of years into the past.
Colmar, France
This Alsatian town, with its impeccably preserved medieval and Renaissance buildings, creates an environment from which fairy tale illustrators have drawn inspiration for generations. The half-timbered houses, with their pastel colors reflected in canal waters, create scenes of impossible picturesque charm.
The seasonal transformations—from summer flower displays to winter Christmas markets—enhance the storybook qualities of a place that somehow escaped the architectural homogenization of the modern era.
Zhangjiajie, China
The towering sandstone pillars of this mountainous region inspired the floating mountains in the film Avatar. Mist weaving between these improbable natural formations, creating a landscape that challenges beliefs about what’s geologically possible.
The addition of glass bridges, elevated walkways, and the world’s tallest outdoor elevator enhances the science-fiction quality of a place that already seemed to belong to another world.
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Edinburgh, Scotland
The dramatic contrast between the medieval Old Town with its narrow wynds and the Georgian New Town creates a city of dual identities that has inspired countless writers. The imposing castle perched atop an extinct volcano overlooking the city adds to the theatrical quality of Scotland’s capital.
The persistent folklore, literary connections, and mysterious underground vaults enhance Edinburgh’s reputation as a place where the boundary between the real and the imagined feels particularly thin.
Jaipur, India
The Pink City presents a masterpiece of urban planning with its broad avenues, elaborate palaces, and distinctive rose-hued buildings. The geometric precision of landmarks like Hawa Mahal and the astronomical instruments of Jantar Mantar create environments that feel purposefully designed to disorient and amaze.
The theatrical element extends to daily life with traditionally dressed guards, elaborately decorated elephants, and architectural details that transform practical buildings into artistic expressions.
Mont Saint-Michel, France
This medieval abbey rising from tidal waters on a rocky islet creates one of the most dramatic silhouettes in architecture. The spiraling village ascending to the abbey creates a perfect medieval hierarchy made visible in stone.
The changing relationship between the island and the mainland as tides advance and recede adds a dynamic quality to a place that already seems too perfectly composed to be anything but imaginary.
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Brasília, Brazil
Unlike cities that evoke fictional worlds through ancient elements, Brazil’s capital achieves the same effect through modernist architecture that feels like a retro-futuristic vision.
The city’s airplane-shaped master plan, governmental buildings resembling flying saucers, and cathedral composed of hyperbolic columns create an environment that embodies mid-20th-century dreams of tomorrow. The vast open spaces and monumental scale make visitors feel like extras on a science fiction set.
Burano, Italy
This island in the Venetian lagoon achieves its fairy tale quality through the vibrant colors that cover every house along its narrow canals. Local legend claims the bright hues helped fishermen identify their homes through the fog, but the cumulative effect creates an environment of childlike wonder and artistic expression.
The mathematical precision of the leaning bell tower adds an element of the improbable to a place that already feels more painted than built.
Shibam, Yemen
Known as the ‘Manhattan of the Desert,’ this ancient city features mud-brick skyscrapers rising improbably from the desert floor. Some buildings reach eight stories tall using 16th-century construction techniques, creating a skyline that predates modern engineering.
The uniform earthen color and geometric precision seen from a distance transform into a complex maze of alleyways, doorways, and staircases up close, rewarding visitors with different fictional worlds depending on perspective.
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Göreme, Turkey
This town, built directly into volcanic rock formations, features entire churches with colorful frescoes carved inside fairy chimneys and conical rock formations. Underground cities nearby allowed entire populations to disappear beneath the surface, adding to the magical quality of a landscape that seems designed for concealment and revelation.
The continued tradition of pottery-making and other ancient crafts enhances the sensation of visiting a place where old ways and technologies remain vital.
Carcassonne, France
This perfectly preserved medieval citadel with its concentric walls, watchtowers, and pointed turrets embodies the quintessential fairy tale castle so completely that it inspired numerous board games and films.
The distinctive slate-blue pointed roofs create a skyline instantly recognizable as belonging more to imagination than practical defense. Walking the ramparts at sunset as the ancient stones glow golden creates an immersive historical fantasy that requires no special effects.
La Paz, Bolivia
The world’s highest administrative capital creates a surreal landscape where buildings cascade down a massive canyon surrounded by the snow-capped Andes. The mixture of colonial architecture, modern buildings, and indigenous influences creates a city without clear reference points to other urban environments.
The addition of the world’s largest cable car network gives visitors drone-like perspectives over a cityscape that already challenged conventional urban development by thriving in such an improbable location.
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Beyond Reality’s Borders
These extraordinary cities remind us that the line between the imagined and the real can be remarkably thin. While fictional worlds draw heavily from real places, these locations demonstrate how human creativity, when applied to architecture and urban planning, can create environments that feel lifted from the pages of fantasy or science fiction.
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