Exciting places in Europe associated with famous women

The Anne Frank House is one of the most popular museums in Amsterdam. It's located at Prinsengracht 263, where Anne Frank and her family hid from the Nazis from 1942 to 1944. For over two years, she recorded her experiences in her diary. In 1944, the family was betrayed and deported. Frank died at the age of 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her diary became world famous.

In the Middle Ages, Hildegard von Bingen was a Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary and polymath. She is considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. She also founded two monasteries. In Bingen on the Rhine, you can walk the Hildegard Path. It passes by the Abbey of St. Hildegard, which was also named after her (pictured left).

Marie Curie was born at 16 Freta Street in 1867. Not being allowed to attend college as a woman, she secretly studied mathematics and physics and officially worked as a governess. In 1891, she went to Paris, where she was honored with the Nobel Prize for her later research on radioactivity. Her birthplace in Warsaw is now a museum.

Markgravine Wilhelmine (1709-1758), the favorite sister of Frederick the Great, is surely one of the most outstanding women of the 18th century. She gave her consent for the New Palace in Bayreuth to be built, along with many other magnificent buildings. Wilhelmine was successful in the intellectual and artistic world. She represented an epoch of change: the Age of Enlightenment.

In the 18th century, Duchess Anna Amalia devoted her life to the arts, changing her court in Weimar into a center of cultural excellence and enjoying a career not only as a stateswoman, but also a respected composer in her own right. A devotee of literature, in 1766, Anna Amalia established the Duchess Anna Amalia Library. Any visit to Weimar should include a visit to its rococo hall.

On the banks of the Landwehr Canal in Berlin is a monument to anti-war activist and Marxist Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919). She met her brutal death here at the hands of the militaristic Volunteer Corps, which was used to put down the 1919 workers uprising. She is revered as a revolutionary who never compromised and, every year on the day of her death, countless people lay down flowers in her honor.

This 15th-century ruin in the Scottish town of Linlithgow is the birthplace of Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587), also known as Mary Stuart. She was just 9 months old when she was crowned Queen of Scots. A tragic figure, she was imprisoned for 18 years by England's Queen Elizabeth I until she was finally executed. She was beheaded and died on February 8, 1587, in Fotheringhay Castle.

Author Jane Austen (1775-1817) was ahead of her time: she opted against getting married, instead spending her time writing. In 1809, she settled with her mother and sister in a cottage in the English hamlet of Chawton. From here she anonymously began to publish her works: "Sense and Sensibility," "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield Park" and "Emma." These days the cottage is open to the public.

Chateau de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley in France: It owes its appearance in large part to Catherine de Medici (1519-1589). Catherine was a member of the powerful Italian de Medici family, and became queen consort of France through her marriage to King Henry II. As queen consort and, later, queen mother, Catherine was highly influential during a period of intense religious and civil conflict.

The Peggy Guggenheim Collection is one of the leading landmarks in Venice. Born into an industrialist family, socialite and art collector Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979) fled New York and, with a makeshift gallery, became the star of Venice. Her collection, which opened in 1948, combined European masters such as Picasso, Ernst and Dali, with young American contemporaries such as Jackson Pollock.