Utrecht

Utrecht is a two-storey city crowned by a tower that lost its church. The Dom tower — the tallest church tower in the Netherlands, model for spires across the country — stands alone on its square because the nave collapsed in a 1674 tornado and was never rebuilt: tower and choir now face each other across the void, the country's grandest architectural sentence with its middle missing. Below, the medieval canals run at two levels — the wharf cellars, dug so cargo could unload at water line, now house cafés at the water's edge, a streetscape unique in Europe and Utrecht's signature pleasure.

Here the Union of Utrecht welded the rebel provinces together in 1579, and the Treaty of 1713 redrew Europe; the university grew into the country's largest, and Dick Bruna drew Miffy in a studio above the canals — the rabbit has her own museum and her own traffic light. Musically Utrecht built the boldest hall in the land: TivoliVredenburg, five halls stacked in one building, from symphonic shoebox to club, hosting everything simultaneously — while the Early Music Festival makes the city each summer the world capital of the historically informed. A tower without a nave, canals with a lower deck, five halls in one: Utrecht layers everything, and loses nothing.