Providence, RI

Providence was founded on an idea. Roger Williams, banished from Massachusetts in 1636 for insisting that conscience belongs to no government, named his settlement for the divine providence that had preserved him — and made it the first polity in the modern world founded on full religious liberty; the First Baptist Church in America, gathered by Williams himself, still worships in its steepled 1775 meeting house. The idea drew everyone: the East Side's College Hill preserves one of the largest colonial districts in the country, mile upon mile of clapboard and fanlight.

The hill belongs to Brown University, the Ivy League's free-spirited member, and to the Rhode Island School of Design, whose graduates run much of the world's visual culture and whose museum is a treasure. Downtown, the rivers uncovered in a famous 1990s reclamation now carry WaterFire, the ritual of a hundred braziers burning on the water to music — an art installation that became the city's signature rite. The archive's stage is the Veterans Memorial Auditorium, "The Vets", the restored 1930s concert hall that is home to the Rhode Island Philharmonic and host to the touring orchestras and companies of every season. Conscience, clapboard and fire on the river: Providence remains well named.