Nijmegen

Nijmegen is the oldest city in the Netherlands and hosts the largest walk on earth. Roman Noviomagus received market rights two millennia ago — the city celebrated its 2,000th birthday in 2005, unchallenged — and Charlemagne kept a palace on the Valkhof hill, whose ruined chapel still watches the Waal's great bend. On that river in September 1944 the city paid war's price: Market Garden's battle and the crossing of the Waal made Nijmegen a name in military history, and the rebuilt centre carries the memory alongside its Roman layers.

Every July the city performs its gentler world event: the Vierdaagse, the Four Days Marches — nearly fifty thousand walkers from around the globe covering up to fifty kilometres a day, cheered by a festival that swells the city to bursting; finishers' gladioli on the final avenue are a national image, and the accompanying feesten rank among Europe's largest festivals of any kind. The university adds Radboud's tens of thousands of students to a city already leftward-leaning and outdoorsy — "Havana on the Waal", the country teases.

The concert record documents the Stadsschouwburg, the municipal theatre on its ring boulevard, the classic stage where touring opera, orchestras and drama have played to Nijmegen for over a century, with the adjoining concert hall completing the address. Legions, emperors, and fifty thousand blisters: Nijmegen endures on foot.