A mecca of manga and anime is celebrating its 40th anniversary in Tokyo this spring. Japan’s largest anime chain’s Animate Ikebukoro Flagship Store feted its grand opening on March 16, to the joy of otaku everywhere.

Girolibero, a Vicenza-based cycling tour company founded in 1998 and now offering leisurely bike and barge tours in northern Italy and nine other countries.

Carlo Scarpa’s inspiration comes less from antiquity than from his study of Japanese design and a reverence for modern craftsmanship and detail. Three sites in and around Venice demonstrate why this underappreciated architect should be on every design aficionado’s radar.

The pedestrian-only main street of Cortina d’Ampezzo is buzzing with tourists, here to breathe the cool mountain air and explore the hikes, via ferratas, and climbing routes around the village. The sheer abundance of alpine adventure opportunities in the area has given Cortina a fitting nickname: Queen of the Dolomites.

The 12 villages of the remote Bavona Valley in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino share similar characteristics, but their stone architecture is less representative of that archetypal Swiss style. That’s not the only thing marking them as outliers—this valley of stone exists completely off the grid.