Just outside of town, this beautiful Renaissance garden is perched on a hillside overlooking the sea. Palm trees, mandarins and grapefruits grow in this wonderful lush garden together with 400-year-old trees with some reaching heights of 50 metres. Particularly well-worth visiting on a sunny day in spring.

A unique landmark in the centre of Road Town, whose history has been enriched by numerous events since the era of plantation society in the 18th century. The site is easy to explore on your own, but it's worth joining a guided tour for some insider facts on this unsettling place.

Further inland, in the southern part of the island, lie the so-called masticochoria (mastic villages). These well-preserved, fortified villages date from the 14th-16th centuries and were centres for the cultivation of mastic. Mastic is the sweet-tasting gum of the lentisk bush, which was exported all over the Mediterranean – and the area still produces around 300 tonnes of mastic every year. The most picturesque villages are Pyrgi, with its houses decorated in black and white geometric patterns called xysta Mesta, where towers and walls surround a baffling labyrinth of village streets as well as Olympoi and Vessa are all a worth a visit.

Carolina Rediviva was erected between 1817 and 1841 and is home to Sweden's oldest university library, founded in 1620. Originally three stories high with two mezzanines, the building now spans 12 stories and has about 5 million books and 3,500 shelf meters of handwritten documents. When you walk through the entrance of the library, you'll come to the exhibition room, where you can view the famous Silver Bible from the 6th century, musical notations made by Mozart himself, medieval manuscripts, and Olaus Magnus' Carta Marina, printed in 1539.