The story of the Palace of the Grand Dukes in Vilnius, Lithuania, and its rebirth began for me many years ago.

I traveled to Lithuania for the first time in the mid-1970s during the bleak years of the Soviet occupation of the country (1940-41, 1944-90). There was no palace visible then, only a park next to Vilnius’ Cathedral (which the Soviets had turned into an art museum). The park covered the site where a palace had stood for centuries until it was destroyed by the Russians...

Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, is one of the gems of the Baltic states, a cluster of three small countries that also includes Latvia and Lithuania. They are all located along the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea in Northeastern Europe.

It would be easy to spend all of your time in Tallinn without venturing beyond. Its Old Town alone, with Hanseatic-era guildhalls and merchants’ houses, kept my husband, Paul, and me happily occupied for three days of our 8-day visit in May...

In the valleys 290 miles southeast of Mexico City, one of Mesoamerica’s earliest civilizations, the Zapotecs, developed. Living off the land, hunter-gatherers first appeared in these valleys about 10,000 years ago. By about 5000-4000 BC, these early settlers had begun to cultivate the land. The first important settlement identifiable as Zapotec, San José Mogote, can be dated to between 1450 and 1150 BC. By the 8th to 7th centuries BC, this settlement had expanded to include dozens of...