Barcelona

A city whose architecture is its main exhibition, with a festival economy that turns two weeks in June into a global event.

Barcelona is the only city in this guide where the most important artworks are addresses people live at. Gaudí built apartment buildings, not monuments, and the Modernisme movement spread through the Eixample as ordinary commissions from ordinary merchants, which is why you can turn a corner on the way to dinner and find a facade that would be a national museum elsewhere.

The museums are strong rather than encyclopaedic: the Miró foundation on Montjuïc is the best single-artist building in Europe, the national museum of Catalan art holds Romanesque frescoes lifted whole from Pyrenean churches, and MACBA gave the Raval a square that became the most famous skate spot in the world by accident.

What the city exports is music. Sónar invented the idea of a festival split between day and night, Primavera turned a park by the sea into a fortnight that moves record deals, and the club culture that supports them runs on a timetable that starts when northern Europe is asleep. Plan your days around a siesta, not around opening hours.