Zwolle

Zwolle counts on its fingers, and the neighbours know why. The "Blauwvingers" — blue-fingers — earned their nickname, legend insists, counting the copper coins in which rival Kampen spitefully paid for Zwolle's church bells: pettiness immortalised, and worn by the citizens with a grin. The Hanseatic city behind the joke was a power — its star-shaped moat and the Sassenpoort gate proclaim the league's prosperity — and, more quietly, a capital of the spirit: on the Agnietenberg just outside, Thomas à Kempis spent seventy years writing "The Imitation of Christ", the most copied book of the Middle Ages after the Bible, making Zwolle's hill the wellspring of the Modern Devotion that taught Europe inwardness.

The modern town honours both inheritances with flair: the Museum de Fundatie crowned its neoclassical palace with a giant blue-and-white cloud of an extension, art under an egg; the city's restaurant De Librije — three Michelin stars in a former monastery library — made Zwolle a pilgrimage of the palate; and the theatre De Spiegel gives Overijssel a modern hall for the touring seasons, atop the register of choirs and church music the concert record describes. Blue fingers, a golden book, a cloud on the roof: Zwolle's accounts, spiritual and municipal, balance beautifully.