Innsbruck, Austria

Few cities let you finish breakfast in a baroque arcade and be standing on a 2,000-metre ridge before the coffee wears off. Innsbruck packs a compact, walkable old town — gilded balconies, painted facades, a green river running straight through the middle — against a wall of limestone that turns copper at dusk. Come in February for the snow, in July for the meadows, and any month at all for the strudel.