Bordeaux

Bordeaux was built on wine, and the money shows in the stone: kilometres of pale eighteenth-century façades lined up along the Garonne. In front of them the Miroir d'eau spreads two centimetres of water over granite and turns the quay upside down, and children run across it with their shoes in their hands. The spires of Bordeaux Cathedral and the free-standing bell tower of Saint Michael's Basilica, the tallest in southern France, rise above the slate roofs. Cité du Vin tells two thousand years of vineyard history and ends with a glass poured high above the river. The Médoc châteaux and the slopes around the Monolithic Church of Saint-Émilion are an hour away, with market stalls shucking Arcachon oysters in between. And to the west stands the highest dune in Europe: the Dune of Pilat falls a hundred metres into pine forest on one side and into the Atlantic on the other.