Worcester, MA

Worcester holds the oldest music festival in the United States: the Worcester Music Festival, founded in 1858, has brought oratorio, orchestras and the world's soloists to the city for over a century and a half — and since 1857 its natural home has been Mechanics Hall, reckoned among the finest pre-Civil War concert halls in America, whose Great Hall and mighty Hook organ have recorded and presented everyone from Caruso's successors to today's period-instrument ensembles. New England's second-largest city thus possesses, quietly, one of the country's great musical pedigrees.

The city's inventiveness is a local sport: Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket from a Worcester-area farm in 1926; Esther Howland industrialised the Valentine card here; the smiley face was drawn by Worcester's Harvey Ball in 1963; and the diner — the city manufactured the classic railcar diners — remains the approved breakfast venue. Nine colleges, Clark University and Holy Cross among them, give the "Heart of the Commonwealth" a permanent student pulse, and the Worcester Art Museum's collection, from Roman mosaics to armour, outclasses many capitals'. Rockets, valentines, smiles and the republic's oldest festival of music: Worcester's modesty is entirely unearned.