Leeuwarden

Leeuwarden produced the twentieth century's most famous spy and its most famous impossible staircases. Mata Hari — Margaretha Zelle, the Frisian girl who became the world's byword for glamorous espionage and died before a French firing squad in 1917 — was born here, and her statue dances on a canal bridge; a few streets away stands the birth house of M. C. Escher, whose tessellating birds and self-drawing hands began in this Frisian capital. The town's own architectural joke suits them both: the Oldehove, the sixteenth-century church tower that began sinking during construction, was abandoned mid-build and now leans, stubby and beloved, at a tilt that out-angles Pisa — the unfinished landmark as civic mascot.

Leeuwarden is the capital of Friesland, a province with its own language, its own anthem, and its own mythic sporting event: the Elfstedentocht, the Eleven Cities skating tour, starts and finishes here — two hundred kilometres of natural ice, held only in the hardest winters, awaited by the nation like a comet. The city's year as European Capital of Culture in 2018 confirmed a lively festival scene, and the concert record's register — choirs, church music, community and visiting programmes — sits atop Friesland's formidable choral tradition. A spy, a printmaker, a leaning tower and a frozen marathon: Leeuwarden's icons all defy the level.