Theo Zenou

In the 1953 classic Roman Holiday, Gregory Peck takes Audrey Hepburn on a tour of the Italian capital on his Vespa. They scooter past the Colosseum, stop for gelato by the Spanish Steps, and sip champagne and iced coffee in front of the Pantheon. But Peck, that rake, sold Hepburn short. No Roman holiday is truly complete without checking out Ponza, a tiny island off the Lazio coast.  Ponza is to the Romans what the Hamptons are to New Yorkers: a safe haven in the muggy summer months. Plus, they can escape all those yokel English-speaking tourists who stalk the Eternal City. Ponza still feels like the Italy of La Dolce Vita. (Federico Fellini shot parts of Satyricon on its beaches.

Christopher Nolan could not resist the spell of the White Dune. Tucked inside a lagoon, it rises out of the sand like a tower, glistening against the cloudless blue sky. The British filmmaker shot several scenes of his blockbuster The Odyssey (out today) at this otherworldly landmark, located near the city of Dakhla in the Western Sahara. Until now, much of the region – a former Spanish colony which has been under Moroccan control since the 1970s – has been largely untouched by tourists. Yet that is expected to change under King Mohammed VI, who is investing billions in metamorphosing the area into a hub for business and tourism. Think of it as tomorrow’s Dubai. The Gulf metropolis, after all, was a fishing village not that long ago.

Over the course of their lives, Americans have an average carbon footprint of 1,200 tonnes of CO2. Paris Ortiz-Wines, a young woman from San Francisco, has already cancelled hers out. She could hop on a flight every week for the rest of her life, eat ribeyes at every meal and sip almond milk all day long, and still be in the clear. Back in 2021, Ortiz-Wines played a key role in the campaign that stopped the closure of California’s only nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon. This has already saved more than 30 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.  Ortiz-Wines is part of a new generation of women advocating for nuclear energy, even though surveys show most women are sceptics. Call them the Nuclear Power Rangers.