The Latest Breaking News from Rhine

Our slow travel expert picks her favourite off-season trips by train to France, Germany, Austria and Italy

Europe is home to some mighty rivers, and there’s no better way to get to know historic waterways than by cruise ship

This exhilarating, nine-hour journey trundles through the Swiss and Austrian Alps and soars to more than 1,000 metres above sea level as it crosses the Rhine-Danube watershed

Rhine river traffic came to a standstill in some places on Wednesday due to strikes against French government plans to raise the pension age, with sections of the river in France, Germany and Switzerland affected, a CGT union representative and Germany's Waterways and Shipping Administration (WSA) said.

Royal Opera’s new staging of Dvořák’s watery Rusalka finds fresh resonsances, while the ENO’s updated Ring cycle is really starting to shine

The blazing fusion of music and drama is only kindled in the closing stages

The Rhine shimmers, the gold dazzles and the gods posture – Richard Jones has by and large gone back to Wagnerian basics for his assured and cogent staging. In the pit, Martyn Brabbins and ENO’s orchestra add lustre

The damage caused by climate change over this past year was at times so immense it was hard to comprehend. In Pakistan alone, extreme summer flooding killed thousands, displaced millions and caused over $40 billion in losses. Fall floods in Nigeria killed hundreds and displaced over 1 million people. Droughts…

CITY GUIDES: With quaint architecture and a food scene to warm your cockles, the third-biggest Swiss city is a compact metropolis worth a stroll at any time of year, says Qin Xie