[ DISCOVERY · THE DISPATCH ]

The Staircases That Are the Whole Point of Visiting the City

Sometimes the landmark is just a flight of steps doing something extraordinary. These are the famous staircases that are, genuinely, the best reason to visit the city around them.

Famous staircases that are tourist attractions all on their own

Some famous staircases are tourist attractions in their own right, and I died a little inside the first time I admitted that out loud, because it sounds like the kind of thing you say when you’ve run out of cathedrals. But then I sat on a set of tiled steps in Rome at dusk, watching the whole city use them as a sofa, and I understood. A great staircase isn’t a way to get somewhere. It’s the somewhere.

I’ve climbed a lot of them. My knees have opinions. Here are the ones worth the burning calves.

Let’s get the famous one out of the way. The Spanish Steps are heaving, they’re hot, and you can’t sit on them anymore without a whistle-blowing officer materialising to fine you. So in one sense, totally overrated.

And yet. Go at 7am, before the crowds and the heat, when a street sweeper is the only other soul and the Bernini boat fountain is gurgling away below. The steps go up in these gorgeous theatrical curves, designed to be looked at as much as walked, and empty, in the morning light, they’re a different thing entirely. The trick to the overrated landmark is almost always just “go when nobody else does.”

This is the one that gets me right in the chest. The Escadaria Selarón in Rio is a staircase covered, every inch, in over two thousand ceramic tiles in red and yellow and blue, collected from more than sixty countries. A Chilean artist named Jorge Selarón started it in 1990 as a small project outside his house and just… never stopped. It became his life’s work. He once said he’d only finish it the day he died, which — and this is the haunting part — turned out to be true.

It’s free, it’s open, it’s a working public stairway in the Lapa neighbourhood. Go in the morning for photos without a hundred other people’s elbows. And be a bit savvy about the area, it’s lively rather than dangerous in daylight but keep your phone in your pocket and your wits about you, same as any big city.

Thailand does staircases as theatre. All over the country, temple stairs are flanked by enormous serpent balustrades — naga, mythical water-snakes — their bodies forming the rails as you climb, scales and all, up to a temple on a hill. The one that stuck with me was a long, long flight where the naga’s heads rear up at the bottom, mouths open, and you walk up between them like you’re being swallowed and reborn.

The catch is the climb is real. Hundreds of steps, full sun, your shirt fully soaked by the top. Bring water, go early, and take your time, there’s no prize for sprinting. The view and the gold roof at the top are the reward, but honestly the snake-rail under your hand the whole way up is the bit I remember.

In Nepal, the steep stone temple staircases — like the ones climbing up the tiered Nyatapola temple in Bhaktapur — are guarded by pairs of stone figures, each one ten times stronger than the one below: wrestlers, then elephants, then lions, then griffins, then goddesses. You climb past this escalating squad of protectors, and it’s such a clever, human bit of storytelling built into a set of steps. Whoever thought of that deserved a raise.

It survived earthquakes that flattened buildings around it. There’s something about standing at the bottom looking up the ranks of guardians that makes a staircase feel less like architecture and more like a held breath.

I know “how to visit a staircase” sounds absurd. Bear with me. One, go early — I cannot say this enough, empty steps are a different landmark to crowded ones. Two, look back down, not just up; the view behind you is usually the better one and everyone forgets to turn around. And three, sit for a minute if you’re allowed to. Watch who else uses the steps. Old men reading the paper, kids racing up, a couple having a quiet row halfway. A staircase is the most democratic landmark there is. Everyone has to climb it the same.

So no, the steps are not a way to get to the attraction. On the right morning, in the right city, they are the attraction, and the church or temple at the top is just the excuse. I’d fly back for any one of these. My knees disagree. They don’t get a vote.

Go early, turn around at the top, and sit on the steps if they’ll let you. The best landmark in the city might just be the thing you were planning to walk up without looking.

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