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Few English cities carry their history as visibly as Bath. The entire city centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, its Georgian terraces, crescents and squares built from the same honey-coloured Bath stone that gives the place its particular warmth in afternoon light. The Roman Baths themselves, fed by the only naturally hot spring in Britain, have drawn visitors since the first century AD, and the layers of occupation since then, medieval, Stuart, Georgian, are compressed into a remarkably compact area that rewards slow exploration on foot.

The Georgian set pieces are the obvious draw for first-time visitors. The Royal Crescent and the Circus, both designed by the elder John Wood and completed by his son, represent the high-water mark of eighteenth-century town planning in Britain. Pulteney Bridge, one of only a handful of bridges in the world with shops built across its full span, connects the city centre to the quieter residential streets of Bathwick. The Abbey churchyard acts as a natural gathering point, and the thermal waters that made Bath famous in Roman times were rediscovered by modern visitors when the Thermae Bath Spa opened in the early 2000s, making the city one of the few places in England where you can actually bathe in geothermal water.