With no Olympics, World Cup, or World Fair, 2011 sounds like a largely uneventful year. That means there’s no major reason to visit (or avoid) any particular city, and no one destination will take over much of the travel media coverage. With that in mind, we guide you to the best city-break options for the new year, where you can catch some exceptional exhibitions.

1. LONDON
Every year is a good year to visit London, but an exception will probably be 2012 before and during the Olympics. So if you’ve never been to the city or wish to return, now’s the time or you better wait a couple of years. You’ll probably see a lot of the city around April in media reports of a certain famous wedding, but we suggest a visit at any time of the year, or perhaps in November for the unprecedented exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings at the National Gallery.
To save you a few pounds, consider getting the London Pass, and for a cultural experience outside the city, plan a visit to Stonehenge.

2. ISTANBUL
One year after it was the European Capital of Culture, Istanbul continues to present a list of major cultural events. In the new year (until the 20th of March), you can see an outstanding exhibition of over forty of Frida Kahlo’s and Diego Rivera’s works at the Pera Museum, and in a short city break in such a large city, you may look into the several organized tours and activities.

3. BARCELONA
You’ve probably seen many Picassos by now, but you’ve never seen an exhibition of the artist’s earliest works like this one. Barcelona’s Picasso Museum, in a co-production with Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum will show works from the early Paris years from June to October. There will also be works by Cézanne, Rodin and Van Gogh who were all inspired by Parisian life in the first decade of the 20th century.
After this exhibition, be sure to also check out the Miró Foundation, and to save you time and money in a short city break, get the Barcelona Card which also comes with a guidebook.

4. NEW YORK
The MoMA is always a must in the Big Apple, and until April 25th you can catch one of several exhibitions worth seeing this year. That’s “On to Pop,” showing works by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, among others. They’re artists who came to define American Pop art, painting the usual objects and images encountered in daily life.
The New York CityPass gets you free admission to MoMA and to a number of other attractions.

5. SAN FRANCISCO
After New York’s, visit San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art which from May to September will co-organize an exhibition with New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Paris’ Réunion des Musées Nationaux. It will present paintings, drawings, and sculptures collected by the Stein family which lived in Paris in the early 20th century and returned to California in 1935 when the SFMOMA was founded. Their collection was instrumental in the creation of the museum, with works by Paul Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso.
As always, in a short city break, the tourist pass is the best investment, so be sure to get your Go San Francisco Card.

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Zurich’s Kunsthaus Museum is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and is doing it with major exhibitions. One of them is the revival of Picasso’s first retrospective shown by the museum in 1932 and curated by the artist himself. This time, starting in October, it’s exhibiting around 70 masterpieces on loan from private collectors and from some of the world’s top museums such as New York’s MoMA and Metropolitan, London’s Tate Modern, and Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza. Count this exhibition to be one of Europe’s top cultural experiences this year, one that will certainly bring thousands to the Swiss city just to see (especially now that, as reported by UCityguides, Paris’ Picasso Museum is closed until 2012). For that reason, tickets are already being sold (see the museum’s website for information on how to get them now).
But obviously before October the museum will also have plenty to see, like the current exhibition on display until next month. It’s showing works by Cézanne, Monet, and van Gogh from the Bührle Collection which will finally have its own space in 2015 thanks to a Kunsthaus expansion. In total there are 150 works to see together with another exhibition focusing on Salomon Gessner.

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Milan has long been known as a fashion capital, so it’s a fitting home for an exhibition of the work of one of the world’s top fashion photographers. Born in England, Tim Walker has been a regular photographer for Vogue magazine (the British, American, and Italian editions), and has his works on display in the permanent collections of London’s National Portrait Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum. Now, this current exhibition in Milan’s Galleria Carla Sozzani shows the artist’s most famous works together with those previously unseen.
His work is often described as evoking a high sense of drama and beauty in stunning sets. He is also described as a “fantasist,” capturing dream-like images. You can see many of them in his book titled “Pictures” published in 2008, just around the time of his first major exhibition in the Design Museum in London.
Now you can get up close to some of his best work at the design mecca of Milan until March 7th.

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The largest collection of Frida Kahlo’s work is naturally found in her native country in the Museo Dolores Olmedo. Now thanks to a special festival celebrating Mexican culture in Brussels, you can see many of the artist’s most important works in Europe. The European Union capital’s Bozar Centre for Fine Arts is showing the exhibition “Frida Kahlo y Su Mundo” (“The World of Frida Kahlo”) now until April 18, consisting of 19 paintings, six drawings, an etching, and several photographs lent by the Dolores Olmedo Museum. These works reflect the artist’s Mexican culture but also her life after a tragic bus accident and a turbulent marriage, in a style that can be described as a mixture of surrealism and symbolism. This combination was in part what attracted the attention of the Louvre Museum which in 1939 made Kahlo the first Mexican artist of the 20th century to have her work purchased by the museum.

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For the most Christian of all holidays, the most inviting travel destination is Rome and the Vatican. But there’s more to experience in the Italian capital at the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010 than the Christmas or New Year’s mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. Christians, non-Christians, agnostics, and atheists will all find something exciting and new to explore in Rome, after the recent opening of the new MAXXI museum. Officially called the National Museum of 21st Century Arts, the Zaha Hadid-designed building is a concrete-and-glass structure next to industrial buildings, and holds contemporary art and architecture exhibitions. Hadid has been quoted as saying that this is actually not a museum but rather a center of art and culture made up of 27,000 square meters of galleries, but whatever it is, it’s a much-welcomed opening in Rome. You may catch a light installation by Tobias Rehberger there until January 10th.
Another contemporary building to check out is Renzo Piano’s Auditorium Parco della Musica which will present holiday-themed concerts, and after that you can always hop on to its hip ReD restaurant which is more of a stylish lounge bar for drinks.
At the end of the day UCityGuides recommend you retreat to Casa Montani this holiday season, a guesthouse in the heart of the city which is a cozier and more reasonably-priced alternative to Rome’s usually-high-priced hotels at this time of the year. It has a good mix of classic and contemporary style and has received very positive reviews from previous guests: Casa Montani

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Tomorrow New York’s Guggenheim will open a new restaurant called “The Wright,” celebrating the 50 years of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed museum.
It will only be serving lunches for now, but will open for dinner starting in mid-January. A special brunch will also be available on Sundays from 11AM to 5PM.
The dining area features a sleek design by architect Andre Kikoski and includes a European-style bar in the center for small plates dining. The entire space is a homage to Wright, and reflecting the museum’s contemporary focus there is a site-specific commission by British artist Liam Gillick running up the walls and ceiling. Accommodating up to 58 diners at a time, it will be a comfortable venue with an upscale atmosphere for after a visit to the museum’s exhibitions or any time in between (for reservations, call 212 427 5690).
At the moment the Guggenheim is presenting a Kandinsky retrospective until the 13th of January. It was previously shown in Paris’ Centre Pompidou and Munich’s Lenbachhaus, and is a comprehensive, chronological presentation with over 100 paintings, including some rarely-seen works from private collections.
Solomon Guggenheim bought more than 150 Kandinsky works when he visited the artist’s studio in Germany in 1930, and that is said to have been the inspiration for Guggenheim’s opening of his own “Museum of Non-Objective Painting” in 1939.

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If you’ll be in Paris until June 2010, you’ll be able to experience one of the French capital’s most breathtaking gastronomic experiences. It’s a temporary restaurant placed on top of the Palais de Tokyo contemporary art museum and is itself a piece of art. This glass box by artist Laurent Grasso is part of the Art Home by Electrolux project and offers fine dining with a view of the Eiffel Tower directly in front of you.
The dining area is surrounded by 18 meters of glass and LED lighting, with a communal table with space for 12 guests placed in the middle. That’s where the experimental, contemporary international cuisine by chef Gilles Sassart is served, with the vegetables coming from the garden within the Palais.
All this combined, and not simply the panoramic vistas, has turned this address into one of the hottest in the city, and the fact that it’s temporary only adds to the curiosity. Reservations must be made one month in advance, with lunch costing 60 euros and dinner 80 (wine is included).
Phone: +33 14 723 5458

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As the world looks to Berlin’s Festival of Freedom today to celebrate two decades of German reunification, at UCityGuides we choose not to concentrate on the city’s past, but take this opportunity to remind you of the German capital’s dynamic present. After a year of Wall-themed events, we’re now ready to celebrate Berlin as it is today, an open, welcoming, vibrant city. As we say in the introduction to our Berlin city guide, when the infamous Berlin Wall came down, the city’s cultural and creative energy went up, and we have much to recommend in it among the countess new openings of the last few months. Today we highlight our three favorites.
The most important cultural opening (or better yet, reopening) was that of the Neues Museum just over a couple of weeks ago, in a building redesigned by English architect David Chipperfield. It houses an extraordinary Egyptian collection, with the most famous piece being the stunning bust of Queen Nefertiti among a total of 9000 items of display.
After an afternoon in Museum Island, check out the city’s hottest new factory conversion. It’s a restaurant in the now-trendy Kreuzberg neighborhood, and features an interior of concrete floors and exposed walls. It’s called “Sage” (pictured above) and is divided into three different areas, from a small formal dining area, to a space with a long communal table and bar, to another small intimate room. In each space guests may try different menus, from refined gourmet dishes to pizzas.
Another much talked-about new opening in the last year was MA Tim Raue in Hotel Adlon Kempinski, offering a sensational all-organic menu using regional ingredients. It’s served in a glamourous Asian-inspired interior featuring a centuries-old clay horse in the center (“MA” means horse in Chinese), and it’s already earned a Michelin star (the hotel has also been awarded 2 U_Stars).

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