Guidebooks are annoying. Just because some editor who doesn’t know me tells me which restaurant is the best or what attraction is a must-see doesn’t make it a must-see attraction. Sightseers’ Delight is dedicated to the weird, the quirky and the fun. After all, traveling is fun.
If it’s not, you’re doing it wrong.
All of the places highlighted in this ever-growing database are great. Sightseers’ Delight has visited them all. We think you should make a point to see every one of them. But, this is not a guidebook. Just a webpage to help you plan your next adventure.
Nicola Salvi in 1732 won a competition to design a new fountain in the Trevi district of Rome. Giuseppe Pannini completed the fountain in 1762. Legend says anyone who tosses a coin into the fountain’s waters will return to Rome. The fountain, featured in countless movies, was built on the site of an earlier fountain.
The Foro Romano or Roman Forum was formerly the center of day-to-day life in Rome. Surrounded by government buildings, residents referred to the area as Forum Magnum or the Forum. It also served as a venue for public speeches, criminal trials and gladiator matches.
Dating to 1769, Fort Church is the oldest church on the island. The church’s associated museum features a number of historic artifacts chronicling the Dutch Protestant congregation that dates to 1635.
Construction on Fort Clinch started in 1847 after the Second Seminole War on a peninsula near Amelia Island’s northernmost point. The only battle at the fort, named in honor of General Duncan Lamont Clinch, a leader in the First and Second Seminole Wars, happened during the Civil War. In 1862, Union troops recaptured the fort after Confederates seized control of the structure. The state of Florida bought the fort in 1935. Today, the fort is part of the 1,100-acre Fort Clinch State Park, which opened to the public in 1938.
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Confederate troops in November 1861 built defenses overlooking the Cumberland and Red rivers. Following a major battle at Fort Donelson in nearby Dover, Confederate troops abandoned Clarksville; Union troops later found the abandoned fort and reworked it for their needs. In 2011, the city opened a $2 million interpretive center to tell the story of Fort Defiance. In addition to a movie in the center, visitors can see remarkable well preserved earthworks at the site and take in a newly installed Confederate money exhibit.
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Fort Donelson National Battlefield preserves the resources of and tells the stories of the 1862 campaign and battles for Forts Henry, Heiman, and Donelson, and the opening of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. The national park includes Fort Donelson National Cemetery, established in 1867, as the final resting for Union soldiers and sailors initially buried in the Fort Donelson area. It contains the remains of 670 Civil War burials and roughly 909 veterans from other wars. Dover Hotel, the Surrender House, was built between 1851 and 1853 and served riverboat travelers before and after the Civil War. Confederate Brig. General Simon B. Buckner and his staff used the hotel as their headquarters during the battle. Buckner surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the hotel.
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James Oglethorpe established Fort Frederica on what is today St. Simons Island in 1736, just three years after he founded Georgia.. The goal of the settlement was to to protect the southern boundary of the British colony of Georgia from the Spanish. At times, more than 600 British troops were stationed at the fort. A visitor to the fort in 1745 described it as “a pretty strong fort of tabby,” noting the structure was “surrounded by a quadrangular rampart, with four bastions of earth well stocked and turned, and a palisade ditch.” During the battles of Bloody Marsh and Gully Hole Creek in 1742, Oglethorpe’s successfully repulsed Spanish attempts to invade St. Simons Island.
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Built in 1721, a dozen years before the first city in Georgia, Savannah, was founded, Fort King George was both the first English settlement on Georgia’s coast and the British Empire’s southernmost outpost in North America. It remained the southernmost settlement until 1736 when Fort Frederica was built on what is today St. Simon’s Island. With the help of historic drawings, the Lower Altamaha Historical Society and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources in 1988, a number of the fort’s structures were rebuilt, including the cypress blockhouse. The reconstructed fort is a replica of Barnwell’s original construction. Today, the park highlights the area’s 18th century cultural history, including the Guale Indians, the 17th century Spanish mission Santo Domingo de Talaje, Fort King George and the Scottish colonists. In addition, the state park features information about 19th century sawmilling.
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Fort Lowell Park is home to the extant remains of the former Fort Lowell military post. The United States Army established the Post of Tucson in May 1862; they abandoned it in July 1864 but re-established it a year later. In August 1866, the Army named the installation renamed Camp Lowell in honor of Gen. Charles Russell Lowell. In March 1873, the Army moved the post to its current location, then located on the outskirts of Tucson, and renamed it Fort Lowell in April 1879. The Amry used this location from 1873 until 1891. The park is home to several of the post’s fortmer adobe structures and a museum.
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Fort Nashborough is a recreation of a stockade established in early 1779 in the French Lick area of the Cumberland River valley. The stockade was a forerunner to a settlement that would become Nashville, Tennessee. The square-shaped log stockade covered 2 acres and contained 20 log cabins. The reconstructed fortification, which stands near the original location, is maintained by Nashville Parks and Recreation.
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