Utica, NY

Utica rose with the Erie Canal — a Mohawk Valley trading town that the great ditch of 1825 turned into a mill city of knitting works and locomotives — and when the mills left, it chose an unusual second act: the city opened its arms to refugees. Bosnians, Burmese, Somalis and a dozen other peoples resettled here in such numbers that Utica became known as "the town that loves refugees", its onion-domed mosque converted from a Methodist church standing as the emblem of a rustbelt city repopulated by the world.

Its cultural holdings are far richer than its size: the Munson (long Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute) is a serious art museum in a landmark Philip Johnson building, holding Pollock, Kandinsky and Thomas Cole's The Voyage of Life; and the archive's stage, the Stanley Theatre of 1928, is one of the most extravagant movie palaces in America — Thomas Lamb's "Mexican baroque" fantasy of gilded balconies — restored as the region's performing-arts centre for touring Broadway, orchestras and opera. Local liturgy is edible: chicken riggies, tomato pie, half-moon cookies, and beer from the Matt family's Saranac brewery, pouring since 1888. Canal town, refuge, palace: Utica's three ages, all still open for business.