Linz

Linz has reinvented itself more thoroughly than any Austrian city. The Danube port where Kepler wrote his Harmony of the World — deriving the music of the planets while teaching in Linz — and where Mozart dashed off his "Linz" Symphony in four days as a house-guest's thank-you, spent the twentieth century as a steel town with a burdened past, then chose the future as its brand: today Linz is a UNESCO City of Media Arts, and every September the Ars Electronica Festival makes it the world capital of art at the technological frontier, its museum glowing on the riverbank like a circuit board at prayer.

The city's musical patron saint is Anton Bruckner, born in nearby Ansfelden, who served as cathedral organist here before Vienna claimed him. Linz repays the debt in full: the Brucknerhaus concert hall curves along the Danube, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz ranks among Austria's finest, the International Brucknerfest opens each autumn season, and the Anton Bruckner Private University trains the next generations. The Musiktheater, opened in 2013, is among Europe's most modern opera houses.

Add the old town's arcades, the Pöstlingberg pilgrimage church reached by a vintage mountain tram, and the Linzer Torte — whose recipe, from 1653, is the oldest cake recipe known — and Linz completes its portrait: past and future on excellent terms.