London wears two thousand years of history without ever feeling stuck in it. In a single afternoon you can stand under the medieval vaults of Westminster Abbey, ride an Underground line older than most countries, and finish the day inside a glass-walled restaurant fifty stories above the Thames. Few cities layer eras this deeply — Roman walls, Georgian squares, Victorian arcades, and razor-sharp modern skyscrapers all live within a fifteen-minute walk of each other.

Each borough behaves like its own small city. Notting Hill's pastel terraces and Portobello market feel worlds apart from South Bank's museums and street performers, or the East End's warehouse galleries, curry houses, and design boutiques. The parks are enormous and free — Hyde Park, Regent's Park, and Hampstead Heath each rival most cities' entire green spaces.

London also does the small stuff extraordinarily well: proper pubs with warm ales, corner bakeries with sausage rolls, black-cab drivers who know every shortcut, and the daily changing of the guard. Add world-beating theatre, three of the planet's greatest museums (all free), and easy day trips to Windsor, Oxford, and Stonehenge, and it's the most rewarding city break in Europe.