Neuchatel

Neuchâtel is carved, said Alexandre Dumas, from a block of butter — the yellow Jura stone of its castle, collegiate church and old-town houses glows exactly so above the lake, and the compliment has stuck for good reason. The castle still governs (the cantonal administration works inside its walls), the market square trades under the giddy painted Maison des Halles, and each September the Fête des Vendanges floods the butter-coloured streets with the wine harvest's parades and confetti.

The town's genius is precision with a sense of humour. In the art and history museum live the Jaquet-Droz automata of the 1770s — the Writer, the Draughtsman and the Musician, three clockwork androids who still write, draw and play for the public on the first Sunday of the month: the mechanical ancestors of the computer, built by local watchmakers to advertise a skill the region never lost. The hills behind hold the Val-de-Travers, birthplace of absinthe, distilled here first and celebrated now with legal cheerfulness; the lakeside honours Friedrich Dürrenmatt, who spent his last decades above the town, with a centre devoted to his double life in ink and paint.

The concert record describes the register accurately — a musical life of churches, choirs, conservatoire and visiting ensembles, with the university adding its seasons. Butter-stone, androids, absinthe and a lake: Neuchâtel is Swiss precision on holiday.