This summer, the winds have blown hot across Europe and elsewhere. So has the art world’s attention, much of it fixated on Venice Biennale pavilions and big-city blockbuster shows. But a handful of smaller exhibitions offer cooler, earthier art pilgrimages far from crowds and heat. Staged in landscapes ranging from Dolomite peaks to Arctic forests, these shows lead art lovers into green space. Each pairs naturally with a hiking holiday, or makes for a destination in its own right. And each asks visitors to reconsider their relationship to the nature around them.

Biennale Gherdëina
Val Gardena, South Tyrol, Italy

The word ‘paradise’ comes from the Old Persian pairi-daēza, meaning ‘walled garden.’ The notion infuses this year’s Biennale Gherdëina – an event in northern Italy’s Val Gardena, a valley flanked by craggy outcroppings of the Dolomites. But in ‘(Future) Paradise Gardens’, curator Samuel Leuenberger strays far from enclosures – this exhibition is about the complicated interplay between humanity and nature. Twenty-four works by 28 regional and international artists, half newly commissioned, span outdoor and indoor sites across three locations, blending eco-sensibility with speculation on the earth’s future.

In Ortisei – a popular hiking and skiing town – sculptures pop up in public spaces, including a wood-carved female Krampus (normally a winter ogre in Alpine lore) by Swiss artist Sandra Knecht hovering over the town square, and Barn from Saltria (2026), Lithuanian artist Augustas Serapinas’s disassembled barn installed in a meadow. Other works are indoors, like Lydia Ourahmane’s Hotel Ladinia (2026), a long-abandoned hotel bar reactivated as a social space (more works by Evelyn Taocheng Wang hang inside). In the nearby town of Santa Cristina, Ana Prvački’s beehive boxes, rendered in marble, sit like monuments against a mountain backdrop. The steep hike to the biennale’s third site, the mountain farm Pilat, is not for the faint of heart, but rewards with sound art, a hillside installation, and text-based works hanging from the trees along the trail.

Stay: Adler Dolomiti, in central Ortisei, is a luxurious classic, with Alice Bucknell’s simulation film Ground Truthing (2026) on view in its basement. Sister property Adler Balance offers standout spa services. And the sleek Residence Altea has self-catering rooms with mountain views.

Eat: Anna Stuben, in Hotel Gardena Grödnerhof, is one of the valley’s three Michelin-starred restaurants, serving six-course tasting menus in an elegant, woodsy room. Osteria Traube Wirtshaus serves delicious regional fare; on its walls is ‘The Apple that Dreamt of Soil’ (2026), a drawing series by biennale artists Pedro Wirz and Michael Marder.

Climate Clock art trail
Oulu, Finland

In Oulu, one of the planet’s northernmost towns, just south of the Arctic Circle, the Climate Clock art trail is a series of seven public artworks produced for Oulu’s year as European Capital of Culture. The trail (with some works reachable by public transport) begins in town with a set of ice-like stone sculptures by Rana Begum. Further afield, totemic ceramic sculptures by Ranti Bam are scattered through a pine forest near the region’s acclaimed Kierikki Stone Age Centre. Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen have created a DIY wooden clock with screens, whose hours, minutes, and seconds are made up of video clips depicting valuable moments from locals’ lives. And near the Kiviniemi fishing harbor, collective SUPERFLEX’s curvy sculpture Super Kello (2026) has a sound element: A local fisherwoman reads one word from The Odyssey in Finnish each hour, a recitation that will take 10 years to complete. This work, and the whole exhibition, is about ‘slowing a story down,’ says curator Alice Sharp, who paired each artist with a scientist and is the founder of the UK-based art and environmental organization Invisible Dust. ‘The project is about looking at nature, and through the artworks you can understand a bit more about yourself through nature and time.’

Stay: The riverside Hotel Lasaretti is packed with artworks, Scandinavian design, and good energy. And the newly renovated Lapland Hotels Oulu offers stylish rooms and an inviting indoor pool and sauna.

Eat: Try reindeer and other local specialties at the elegant Ravintola Uleåborg 1881, often ranked among Finland’s top restaurants. At the unpretentious Hugo, six- or three-course menus might feature salmon dishes or morel soup, paired with samples from a long list of wines. A local favorite.

Sonsbeek 
Arnhem, Netherlands

In 1949, the Dutch city of Arnhem grappled with the destruction of World War II – swaths of the community were obliterated in the Battle of Arnhem – by mounting an outdoor exhibition in Park Sonsbeek, an enchanting 19th-century English-style park. At the time, restorative public space and cultural inspiration were scarce, and people urgently needed to come together.

Sonsbeek has since become Europe’s oldest public art exhibition, running intermittently but always city-funded, public, and mostly outdoors. This 13th edition, titled ‘I don’t need a backyard, I share a park’, captures the anxieties and hopes of the contemporary condition, while nodding to memory. Curators Christina Li and Amira Gad have assembled 18 artists, their works waiting to be discovered while wandering through town and the park’s paths, ponds, waterfalls, cow pastures, and resident deer. Alvaro Barrington has built a small shack (Do You Trust Me, 2026); Larry Achiampong has wrapped Dutch monumental statues in African flags; and Femke Herregraven’s work threads through the park as sculptural sensors, culminating in a simulated forest ecosystem screened on a large monitor tucked into foliage and visible from a floating pond platform that sways as her simulations flicker. In town, highlights include documentation of a project by On Kawara, and Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven’s colorful flowerbed sculpture Mystic Hexagram (2026) near city hall. Sonsbeek, an easy walk from Arnhem Centraal station, is well worth a day trip from Amsterdam.

Stay: Adjacent to Park Sonsbeek is Hotel Molendal, a 19th-century building where old-world charm meets impeccable service. A bit further from the center is the stately Landgoed Groot Warnsborn.

Eat: Visit De Blauwe in town for delicious Turkish specialties and a lively crowd. Two exemplary restaurants are conveniently located in Park Sonsbeek: the casual Sonsbeek Paviljoen for Chinese-Indonesian fare or, for a more formal experience, the restaurant at Stadsvilla Sonsbeek, the park’s former manor house.