Hasselt

Hasselt is the capital of Belgian Limburg and of a spirit: jenever, the juniper grandfather of gin, whose story the National Jenever Museum distils in a working nineteenth-century distillery — and once a year, during the Jeneverfeesten, the little Borrelmanneke fountain in the old town famously runs with the stuff, a municipal miracle no other city has thought to attempt. The town wears prosperity lightly: a pedestrian heart of fashion streets (the modest capital likes to call itself the "capital of taste"), the Fashion Museum to argue the case, and — improbably and delightfully — the largest Japanese garden in Europe, a gift of partnership with Itami, where tea ceremonies proceed among Limburg's koi.

Hasselt's stages come in two sizes, both documented in the concert record: the Cultureel Centrum, the classic municipal house for concerts, theatre and dance, and the Ethias Theatre by the canal basin, the arena-scale hall where touring productions and orchestral spectaculars play to the province. In late August the fields at Kiewit on the city's edge host Pukkelpop, one of Europe's major rock festivals, tripling the local population overnight.

A gin fountain, a Japanese garden, an arena and an alternative festival: Hasselt assembles its pleasures with Limburg calm — friendly, unhurried, and convinced, not without reason, that the good life is a provincial invention.