Villach

Villach is the merriest city in Austria by official temperament: its carnival is the country's most famous, the Villacher Fasching whose gala sessions are broadcast nationwide each February, crowning the city — for one delirious season — the republic's capital of organised laughter. Summer answers with the Villacher Kirchtag, Austria's largest traditional folk festival, when hundreds of thousands fill the old town for a week of dirndls, brass bands and Carinthian song around the church feast of St James.

The gaiety has geography behind it. Villach sits where Austria leans toward Italy and Slovenia — three cultures within half an hour, a fact audible in the market and the menu — and where the Drava gathers the warm lakes of Carinthia: Ossiacher See and Faaker See glitter at the city's edges, with the pyramid of the Mittagskogel standing guard. The Romans ran their Amber Road through here; the thermal springs of Warmbad Villach have soothed travellers since antiquity; and Paracelsus, the great Renaissance physician, spent his youth in the town his father served as doctor.

Culture keeps a serious register beneath the festivity: the Congress Center's concert seasons, the galleries of the old town, and — across the lake at Ossiach abbey — the Carinthian Summer festival, which brings international chamber music and opera to the region each July. A city that knows how to celebrate, and what is worth celebrating.