In defence of the world's ‘worst' attractions (including Stonehenge)

Telegraph

26-03-2025

The world of travel is often only interested in the nice things: in the biggest and the best. The coolest and the most chic. The furthest and the finest. The five-star and the fabulous.
So a certain amount of credit should go, perhaps, to a recent study which introduced a balancing note of realism – in suggesting a smattering of famous sites that do not live up to expectations when you cross an ocean, a continent or a city to admire them in person.
Compiled by the people behind the casino website Casimonka, this disappointed survey scoured the web for the unimpressed opinions of international travellers, and produced a ten-strong list of celebrated locations whose starry images are rather less lustrous when seen first-hand. These included major plazas in New York, vast Roman amphitheatres, much loved curves of sand in Rio – and entire bodies of water in the Scottish Highlands.
But then, most opinions are subjective, and there is almost always an opposite view. As the saying sort of goes, one woman's horribly crowded beach can be another's sunbathing heaven, and one man's weird plaque in the desert can be another's road-trip of a lifetime.
Something like that, anyway. Here, a selection of Telegraph Travel 's regular writers come out fighting – or, at least, with a peeved and/or perplexed expression on their faces – to defend the honour of six maligned tourism hotspots. And yes, this includes Times Square.
Chris Leadbeater
Times Square
Robert Jackman
There are some places that are so famous that no sensible person could fail to recognise them. I call it the Mario Kart test: if you put a parody version in the Nintendo game, would the audience know what they're looking at? And Times Square is one of the few destinations on earth that meet that standard (hence its inclusion in Mario Kart Tour).
Sure it might be crowded and over-commercialised, but can you really visit New York City without seeing it at least once? I remember the first time I walked through it heading back from the theatre and getting that thrilling feeling where your brain makes that connection between your surroundings and the image of New York you've held in your subconscious for so long.
It might seem a preposterous comparison, but it was the same feeling I had when I first caught sight of the Hagia Sophia on a youthful venture to Istanbul. It's that final confirmation that you have arrived at your destination.
Stonehenge
Sarah Baxter
If you go just because you think you should, Stonehenge is an anticlimax: a clump of rocks you can't get close to, squatting by the A303. But think deeper, broader, ancient-er, and this site is something else.
The 5,000-ish-year-old stone circle is the postcard, but it's only one part of a wider landscape of curious, mysterious earthworks. Eschew the bus from the visitor centre and walk to the stones – or, better, approach from Durrington Walls, via the tombs of King Barrow Ridge then along the processional Avenue, ideally at dawn, imagining the meaning it all held millennia ago – and it's not a let-down at all.
Four Corners Monument
Chris Leadbeater
I am not completely surprised to find Times Square in such a survey. It is one of the focal points of New York, thousands pass through it every hour, and there will always be those who think (with reason) that it is quite high on crowdedness, but a little short on 'clean'.
Yet the presence of the Four Corners Monument in the study left me rather bemused. For one thing, it is not a place you form an opinion of at random. It is a fairly long way from everywhere, and even if you are glimpsing it en route to or from Monument Valley, there are 80 miles between you and that particular enclave of Wild West rock formations. You have to make a real effort to reach Four Corners. You don't simply stumble across it.
So I suppose I can understand the viewpoint of anyone who has driven a great distance to visit what is effectively a giant plaque marking the point where four US states – Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico – meet in a single spot. The monument does not, it scarcely needs saying, have the majesty of the Mitten Buttes or Castle Rock (let alone Eagle Mesa or King-On-His-Throne) that hour-and-a-half's drive along US Route 160.
However, Four Corners is as much a part of that Western landscape as its eulogised neighbour – only in a slightly silly, rather than spectacular, way. It is, after all, a triumph of geometry over geology – a visual representation of how these four states are straight lines and rigid right-angles drawn on a map; a case-study in humanity imposing its will upon a desert landscape. But more than this, it is a location where you can put your big boot down and be in four places at once. And who, given the chance, wouldn't want to do that?
Copacabana Beach
Chris Moss
Copacabana is many things at one – all of them are interesting. It's a classic crescent-shaped beach of cool golden sand, with bracing water that is sometimes swimmable, often best for surfing. Most people go there to lie down, read, doze, bronze.
It's a cultural space. Brazilians adore the coast and Rio 's residents – the cariocas – have perfected the art of seaside fashion, from otiose bikinis and boarder shorts to flipflops. Copacabana has an open-air exercise gym for working out and weight-training, tai chi, yoga, a massage. It has hundreds of unmarked pitches for football in all its variations, including altinha – a version of keepy-uppy that blends soccer with volleyball.
From dawn till dusk locals come down to get fit and have fun, or hang out. Along the famous wave-tiled promenade are postos – lifeguard stations, each with its own distinctive social scene (10 is for celebs, 12 for families, 9 is LGBTQ+ -friendly).
Nearby are bars for coconut water and chilled beer, and music bars. You can swim, surf, sunbathe, dance, drink, flirt, pose or people-watch. Ipanema is more fashionable. Leblon is posher. But Copacabana is the biggest and is popular in the true sense of the world. It's rightly the most famous beach in the world and TripAdvisor naysayers reveal more about themselves than the local reality when they diss it.
Loch Ness
Robin McKelvie
The idea of Loch Ness being a 'letdown' is surreal, as this epic aquarium-clear, mountain-kissed oasis holds more water than all the lakes in Wales. And England. Combined. Were it called the fjord (it is in all but name) this glaciated wonder would be trammelled by even more tourist hordes than it already is.
Perhaps the biggest 'letdown' is not catching sight of Nessie, but if you've based your hard-earned break around a (probably – sorry Scottish tourism) non-existent monster you've only really let yourself down. Maybe just forget Nessie and savour the rugged peaks, the fine pubs of Fort Augustus, Thomas Telford's remarkable 200-year-old Caledonian Canal and the Jacobite-tinged romance of fairy-tale Castle Urquhart.
The Colosseum
Lee Marshall
Underwhelmed by the Colosseum? I blame Gladiator. And Spartacus, and all the other films, and books, that have led people to expect, if not a full-scale naval battle, at least a couple of tigers prowling around a guy with big muscles and a trident. Instead, there isn't even a floor – just what is left of the hypogeum, a maze of exposed underfloor passageways.
These are fascinating – this is where the wild animals entered – but to bring it all to life you need information, and imagination. A good guide can supply both – like Agnes Crawford of Understanding Rome, who believes firmly that 'if you're disappointed by the Colosseum, you're doing it wrong'.