Where to go: Easter holidays 2028

Cyprus

Look beyond the resort strips and Cyprus offers Roman mosaics at Paphos, frescoed Byzantine chapels in the Troodos pine forests and a capital divided by a UN buffer zone since 1974.

Tunisia

Tunisia fits Roman ruins, Saharan dunes and Mediterranean beaches into one compact, affordable country.

Jordan

Watching Petra's Treasury emerge from the narrow Siq is one of travel's genuine goosebump moments, and camping in Wadi Rum's red desert under a clear sky follows close behind.

Costa del Sol & Andalucía coast

Málaga's coast is mainland Spain's easiest sun destination from the UK: frequent flights, a train linking the airport to the resorts and around 300 days of sunshine a year.

Canary Islands

Spain's Atlantic archipelago, off north-west Africa, is Britain's favourite winter-sun escape: around 21–22°C by day in January, roughly four and a half hours from London and on the same clock as the UK. Tenerife and Gran Canaria pair big resorts with volcanic peaks; Lanzarote and Fuerteventura are flatter, windier and built around beaches.

Egypt

The Pyramids of Giza have stood at the edge of Cairo's sprawl for four and a half thousand years, and the Nile between Luxor and Aswan is lined with temples best seen from a cruise boat or felucca.

Turkish Riviera (Antalya, Dalaman coast)

Turkey's south-west coast runs from the pine-backed bays of Dalyan and Fethiye past Kalkan and Kaş to Antalya's big resort strip, with Lycian tombs, Roman theatres and warm sea from May to October.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Ottoman bazaars, Austro-Hungarian boulevards and raw recent history sit side by side in a mountainous country still lightly touched by mass tourism.

Morocco

A short flight from the UK, Morocco offers astonishing variety: the labyrinthine medinas of Marrakech and Fez, the blue lanes of Chefchaouen, High Atlas trekking and a night among the Erg Chebbi dunes near Merzouga.

Serbia

Serbia is the Balkans at full volume: Belgrade's riverside clubs and kafanas, Novi Sad's Austro-Hungarian streets, medieval monasteries painted with Byzantine-style frescoes and the forested gorges of the Drina and Danube.

Czech Republic

Prague's Gothic and Baroque old town is the draw, but it is worth going further: Český Krumlov's castle above a loop of the Vltava, Kutná Hora's bone chapel, the spa colonnades of Karlovy Vary and the sandstone towers of Bohemian Switzerland.

France

France rewards travellers who look beyond Paris: Renaissance châteaux along the Loire, Mont-Saint-Michel rising from its tidal bay, Alpine trails beneath Mont Blanc, lavender and hill villages in Provence, and vineyards from Champagne to Bordeaux.

Netherlands

The Netherlands crams Golden Age canal cities, world-class art and a landscape engineered from the sea into a compact, flat country laced with railways and cycle paths.

Algeria

Africa's largest country runs from a Mediterranean coast of Roman ruins and French-era boulevards to Saharan sandstone plateaus, where Tassili n'Ajjer's rock paintings record a greener past.

Lebanon

Lebanon squeezes Roman temples, Phoenician harbours, cedar groves and Ottoman-era souks into a country you can cross in a morning.

Kosovo

Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008 and has Europe's youngest population, is one of the continent's cheapest places to travel.

North Macedonia

Lake Ohrid's Byzantine churches look out over some of Europe's clearest water, and Skopje sets an Ottoman bazaar beside a startling crowd of modern statues.

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan holds the finest Silk Road cities in Central Asia.

Gambia

Mainland Africa's smallest country is a thin strip either side of the River Gambia, around six hours' flight from London and on GMT. Most visitors come for Atlantic beaches and birding, with more than 500 species recorded, but the river leads inland to Kunta Kinteh Island's slave-trade history, chimpanzee islands and ancient stone circles.

Cape Verde

Ten volcanic islands some 600km off Senegal, each with its own personality: flat, windy Sal and Boa Vista for beaches and kitesurfing, vertiginous green Santo Antão for some of the Atlantic's finest hiking, Fogo's active volcano, and Mindelo's music bars, home town of the singer Cesária Évora.

Vietnam

Vietnam stretches some 1,650 km from the karst mountains of the Chinese border to the Mekong Delta, and a north–south journey is one of Asia's great trips.

Lesotho

Lesotho is a mountain kingdom entirely surrounded by South Africa, and its lowest point sits at about 1,400 metres — higher than any other country's.

China

China rewards ambition: walk the Great Wall at Mutianyu, face the Terracotta Army in Xi'an, drift down the Li River between karst peaks, and eat your way from Beijing duck to Sichuan chilli.

Dominican Republic

The Dominican Republic is best known for Punta Cana's all-inclusive beaches, but it has far more depth: Santo Domingo's Ciudad Colonial is the oldest continuously inhabited European city in the Americas, humpback whales gather in Samaná Bay each winter, and Pico Duarte rises above 3,000 metres.

South Africa

South Africa delivers Big Five safaris, two oceans and a world-class wine country in a single trip.

Brunei

Ulu Temburong's canopy walkway puts you above the rainforest rather than beneath it, and the golden-domed Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque anchors a capital with a stilt-house water village at its heart.

Taiwan

Taiwan crams in marble gorges, peaks approaching 4,000m, Japanese-era hot springs and some of Asia's best night-market food into an island whose high-speed trains link Taipei and Kaohsiung in as little as 90 minutes.

South Korea

South Korea moves fast: Seoul's palaces, neon districts and late-night food culture sit alongside Buddhist temples in the hills, Gyeongju's royal tombs and Busan's seafood markets and beaches.

Costa Rica

Around a quarter of Costa Rica is protected, and its wildlife is unusually easy to see: sloths and capuchins in Manuel Antonio, nesting turtles at Tortuguero, quetzals in Monteverde's cloud forest.