Хановер

Hannover once supplied Britain with kings: for over a century after 1714, the Electors of Hanover reigned in London as Georges I through IV, a personal union that tied this Leine river residence to a world empire — and explains why Handel's employers moved to Westminster. The dynasty's true monument stayed home: the Herrenhausen Gardens, among Europe's supreme baroque garden ensembles, their Great Garden a geometry of parterres, fountains and a garden theatre where opera is still performed under open sky. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the universal genius, served the court here for forty years — inventing calculus, dreaming of binary arithmetic — and the city keeps his house and his cookie-immortalised name.

Modern Hannover reinvented itself as the world's meeting place: the Hannover Messe is the planet's leading industrial fair, EXPO 2000 left its futuristic quarter, and the city's famously "purest" standard German makes it every language student's recommended destination. The rebuilt half-timbered old quarter, the vast New Town Hall with its dome-climbing slanted lift, and the Maschsee lake give the trade city its civic graces.

Music maintains courtly standards: the Staatsoper resides in one of Germany's handsomest classical theatre buildings, the NDR Radiophilharmonie ranks among the country's fine broadcasting orchestras, and the violin competition honouring Joseph Joachim — Hannover's great concertmaster — draws the world's young virtuosi to the kings' city.