Rome

Rome is a city without equal in Europe, and arguably in the world. Nowhere else does history pile up with such density: modern streets run alongside the walls of ancient Rome, seventeenth-century Baroque piazzas open onto temples of Augustus, and Renaissance palazzi share a block with paleochristian basilicas. In three days in Rome, an attentive traveller crosses twenty-eight centuries of Western civilisation — from the Roman Forum where Cicero delivered his speeches to the Vatican Museums where Michelangelo painted the Book of Genesis on a ceiling.

But Rome is not just an open-air museum. It is a living, noisy, passionate, infuriating, captivating city, where the Roman way of life — the evening passeggiata, the standing espresso, the Sunday lunch that runs to three hours — feels as authentic now as it did a century ago. The neighbourhoods of Trastevere, Testaccio, Pigneto and Prati offer a working-class everyday life that contrasts beautifully with the grand monuments at the centre. Rome is two hours from London or Paris by plane, no visa, no currency change required — and yet the change of scene is total. The light is different, the noise is different, the way people lean against the bar to drink an espresso is different. Few cities reward repeat visits as generously: each return reveals new churches, new trattorie, new layers of an inexhaustible city.