Jeremy Flint

Choosing the world’s most beautiful places is no easy task. After all, how can you compare a thundering waterfall to a lantern-lit city? Or a rainbow-coloured hill to a gleaming white mosque? The good news is that the planet isn’t held to the same rigid beauty standards as humans are. Whether it’s a tiny island, an entire country or a Buddhist temple, anything goes on our list of the most beautiful places on earth. Spanning every continent, you’ll find some of the usual suspects (what’s a list of beautiful places without Bolivia’s salt flats, after all?) alongside some of the world’s lesser-known beauty spots – all chosen by our network of globetrotting travel writers, who've personally experienced the beauty of every place on this list IRL.  Grace Beard is Time Out’s deputy travel editor, based in London. At Time Out, all of our travel guides are written by local writers who know their cities inside out. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines and check out our latest travel guides written by local experts.RECOMMENDED:⛰️ The most beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites🗺 The most underrated travel destinations🧭 The best places to travel solo🏝 The best beaches in the world

Clashing wooden sticks, billowing handkerchiefs, jangling bell pads and the occasional ‘woop’: you might think you know what morris dancing looks like. An odd, dusty ritual that’s performed once a year at the village fête? Not anymore: this 500-year-old artform is getting a surprising revamp. Morris dancers are posting videos of themselves on TikTok sharing routines to Beyoncé’s ‘Break My Soul’. Earlier this year, the all-female dancing side Boss Morris accompanied indie outfit Wet Leg’s performance at the 2023 Brit Awards. And, despite the scene’s historically white, male demographic – in 2020, less than one percent of morris dancers were non-white and there was even a reported attempt by white nationalists to appropriate the tradition – morris dancing is becoming trendier, younger and more diverse.  Photograph: Jeremy Flint At its most basic, morris dancing is a form of English folk dance, based on rhythmic stepping and choreographed figures, often soundtracked by instruments like the pipe, fiddle, melodeon and drums. Practised by different teams, known as ‘sides’, for centuries, this age-old dance has come a long way since the Morris Ring formed in 1934, exclusively for men. Now, the three Morris organisations in the UK – the Morris Ring, Morris Dancers UK and the Morris Federation – cater to all genders, and the dance is experiencing a resurgence in popularity. Could it be true? Sometimes (whisper it), in certain circles, people are cautiously saying that morris dancing