All Destinations

York is England's medieval time capsule — a walled city in North Yorkshire where Roman ramparts, Viking street names, and a Gothic minster the size of a small mountain coexist inside a 3.4 km loop you can walk in two hours. York Minster is the largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe; the Shambles (15th-century overhanging timber-frame butchers' lane) was J.K. Rowling's reference for Diagon Alley; the Jorvik Viking Centre sits over the actual 10th-century Viking dig at Coppergate. It's a 2-hour direct LNER train from London King's Cross and the most visited UK city outside London.

A walled peninsula on Croatia's central Dalmatian coast, halfway between Split and Pula, where Roman ruins meet 21st-century sound art. The Sea Organ — Nikola Bašić's wave-powered installation of 35 underwater pipes built in 2005 — moans and chords with every passing swell along the western promenade, while the adjacent Greeting to the Sun lights up at dusk from 300 sun-charged glass plates set into the quay. Inland sits the 9th-century rotunda of St Donatus on the Roman Forum. Zadar is also the practical gateway to Kornati Islands National Park and Plitvice Lakes, both an easy day trip away.

Croatia's inland capital — overlooked by visitors who fly straight to Split or Dubrovnik, but the city Croatians themselves rate above the coastal scrum. Medieval Upper Town (Gornji Grad) sits on the hill: cobbled lanes, the colourful tile roof of St. Mark's, the Stone Gate chapel where Zagrebčani still light candles. Below, the 19th-century Lower Town (Donji Grad) holds Austro-Hungarian boulevards, museums (including the world's only Museum of Broken Relationships), and Tkalčićeva — the densest café-and-bar strip in Croatia. Add the award-winning Advent Christmas market (best in Europe three years running) and you get the surprise of a Habsburg-era capital at half the price of Vienna.

Car-free Alpine village of 5,800 residents pinned beneath the 4,478 m Matterhorn — the most photographed mountain in Switzerland and arguably the world. The 1898 Gornergrat cog railway climbs to 3,089 m for the classic frontal Matterhorn view, and the Klein Matterhorn cable car tops out at 3,883 m, the highest cable-car station in Europe. Only electric taxis are allowed in town; everyone arrives by train through Visp. Year-round skiing on the Theodul Glacier and 400 km of summer hiking trails make this Switzerland's signature mountain resort.

Switzerland's largest city — banking capital, Lake Zürich anchor, and (consistently) one of the world's two or three highest-quality-of-life cities. Altstadt's medieval lanes climb to the twin towers of the Grossmünster (where Zwingli launched the Swiss Reformation in 1519); Bahnhofstrasse runs from the Hauptbahnhof to the lake; the Kunsthaus holds Switzerland's finest art collection. The Uetliberg's panorama trail and the lake's swim baths (Frauenbad, Männerbad, Seebad Enge) are the locals' summer rituals. Expensive — but the trains run on the dot.