Brussels, Belgium

Brussels compresses several cities into one: the medieval grandeur of the Grand Place (arguably the most beautiful square in Europe, according to Victor Hugo), the gleaming glass towers of the EU quarter, the art nouveau streets of Ixelles, and the immigrant-market energy of Molenbeek and Saint-Gilles. The Grand Place itself — a 14th-century guild square surrounded by gilded baroque facades — is the centrepiece, but Brussels rewards those who look beyond it. The Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts hold the world's largest collection of Bruegel the Elder paintings. The Art Nouveau trail — Victor Horta's own town house (now the Horta Museum, UNESCO), the Hôtel van Eetvelde, the Old England department store — is one of Europe's finest collections of the movement that began here. The city's role as de facto capital of the EU means the Place du Luxembourg and EU quarter are as much landmarks as the Atomium (the relic of the 1958 World's Fair, with its nine stainless-steel spheres). The Manneken Pis is smaller than the postcards suggest, but the irreverence it embodies is genuinely Belgian. And then there is the food: moules-frites, waterzooi, Belgian waffles (Brussels-style: lighter and rectangular, not the Liège variety), speculoos, pralines from Pierre Marcolini or Neuhaus, and an extraordinary beer culture — gueuze and lambic breweries dot the surrounding Pajottenland. Brussels is also the capital of the Belgian comic strip tradition: Tintin, the Smurfs, Lucky Luke, and Spirou were all created here.