Clustered around a serene lake, the city is framed by two striking religious monuments a towering white Buddha that looks down on the city from the hills and the gold canopied roof that crowns the lakeside Temple of the Tooth.

BBC: Getting to the heart and soul of hilly Sri Lanka

Shades of red, vermilion and gold light up forested hillsides, shrine and temple grounds, public gardens and city avenues all over the country.

BBC: K��y��: Japan��s autumn explosion of colour

Likewise, Carol Delaney, a cultural anthropologist at Stanford University, concludes that Columbus was a deeply religious man whose purpose was to sail to Asia to obtain gold in order to finance a crusade to take back Jerusalem and rebuild the Jews' holy Temple.

CNN: Was Columbus secretly a Jew?