Strasbourg

Strasbourg has spent two thousand years as a crossroads and made a philosophy of it. The Grande Île — the entire historic centre, ringed by the Ill — was among the first city ensembles UNESCO ever inscribed, and at its heart the cathedral's single spire of pink Vosges sandstone was the tallest building on earth for over four centuries; inside, the astronomical clock still performs its Renaissance procession of automata at half past noon. Gutenberg developed his printing experiments here in the 1430s; Goethe studied here and learned to love Gothic architecture by climbing this tower; and in April 1792 an officer named Rouget de Lisle first sang, in a Strasbourg salon, the war song that became the Marseillaise — France's anthem is Alsatian by birth.

Passed between France and Germany four times in seventy-five years, the city answered history by becoming Europe's parliament chamber: the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Parliament all sit here.

Its musical establishment matches the civic rank: the Opéra national du Rhin, one of France's leading opera companies, and the Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg, among the oldest French orchestras, resident at the Palais de la Musique et des Congrès — the great hall documented in the concert record, where the city's symphonic seasons and its many festivals convene. Between the timbered lanes of Petite France and the parliament's glass, Strasbourg remains what the cathedral's builders assumed: a place where Europe meets.