Ljubljana

Ljubljana is a capital drawn by one man's pencil. Jože Plečnik, returning home in 1921, spent three decades redesigning his city — the Triple Bridge fanning across the Ljubljanica, the riverside markets, the National Library's window-studded cliff of brick — until Ljubljana became, uniquely in Europe, a modern capital that is also a single architect's artwork. The dragon on the bridge is the city's emblem; the castle on its hill and Prešeren Square below, named for the poet whose verse became the national anthem, complete a centre made for walking, since the riverbanks are pedestrian and the cafés begin where the traffic ends.

The musical pedigree is startling for a city this size: the Academia philharmonicorum of 1701 makes Ljubljana's philharmonic tradition among Europe's oldest — Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms accepted its honorary diplomas, and a young Gustav Mahler spent his first season as a conductor here in 1881. The tradition's summer home is Plečnik's own last masterpiece: Križanke, the monastery of the Teutonic Knights that he transformed in the 1950s into an open-air theatre of arcades and lanterns — the venue documented in the concert record — where the Ljubljana Festival has gathered international orchestras and soloists every summer since 1953. A dragon, a poet, an architect and three centuries of philharmonics: Ljubljana is small only on the map.