Norwich

Norwich was medieval England's second city, and the density survives: a church for every week of the year and a pub for every day, runs the old boast, and the walker can still test both. Two cathedrals bracket the centre — the Norman one whose spire is England's second tallest, its cloisters vast, and the Catholic one answering from the hill — while the castle's cube keep and the timbered lanes of Elm Hill complete a townscape the Victorians mercifully spared. The city's deepest voice is a quiet one: Julian of Norwich, the anchoress whose Revelations of Divine Love is the first book in English known to be written by a woman, composed it in a cell here — "all shall be well" is a Norwich sentence.

Its modern letters earned Norwich the title of England's first UNESCO City of Literature, with the university's writing school as engine. The stages documented in the concert record are the civic pair: the Theatre Royal, the region's major receiving house for opera, ballet and orchestras, and the Assembly House, the Georgian ballroom where recitals and society have met since the eighteenth century — the record also lists the Imperial Vienna Orchestra, a touring ensemble rather than a Norwich institution, flagged for the workbook. Mustard, mystics and matinées: Norwich wears its abundance lightly.