A bazaar city on the edge of the Lut desert, with the Ganjali Khan bathhouse and the Rayen citadel nearby.
The Garden City oasis, camel market and Jebel Hafeet, the UAE's only UNESCO site.
The model city of parks and bus lanes, the glass Botanical Garden and the train to the coast.
Graceland, Sun Studio where Elvis recorded, Beale Street blues and the Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel.
Temple Square, the Great Salt Lake and the greatest snow on Earth an hour up the canyons.
The live-music capital: SXSW, bats under the Congress bridge and breakfast tacos.
A round fort of 1668, the Friday goat market and the date-palm oasis at the foot of Jebel Akhdar.
A Crusader sea castle, a soap museum in an old khan and the vaulted souks of a Phoenician port.
A silver-mining city of pink cantera stone with a cable car over the centre and a mine to walk through.
The Inner Harbor, Fort McHenry where the anthem was written and Chesapeake blue crabs.
The Motown Museum, the Henry Ford, Art Deco skyscrapers and a comeback story.
The Walker sculpture garden, the Mississippi falls and lakes inside the city limits.
The longest zipline in the world off Jebel Jais, mountains and quieter beaches than Dubai.
A maze of streets built to confuse pirates, clay tinajones jars and a ballet company.
The dzong at the meeting of two rivers, the old winter capital, with jacaranda in spring.
The 2,000-year-old sacred city: giant brick stupas and the oldest planted tree with a known date.
The largest city north of the Arctic Circle, the nuclear icebreaker Lenin and forty days of polar night.
A complete Ming-dynasty walled city where China's first banks were founded.
Kobe beef, a harbour between the mountains and the sea, and the night view from Mount Rokko.
The Qissa Khwani storytellers bazaar, Gandhara art in the museum and the road to the Khyber Pass.
The blue city under the Mehrangarh fort, the biggest and most dramatic in Rajasthan.
Carved wooden houses of the Siberian merchants and Decembrist exiles, an hour from Lake Baikal.
The Tamil north, a Dutch fort, the Nallur Kandaswamy temple and the crab curry.
The Savitsky museum, a hidden collection of banned Soviet avant-garde art in the Karakalpak desert.
Nine Arch Bridge, the train through the tea country and the hike up Little Adam’s Peak.
The summer capital in the pine-covered Cordillera, a night market and strawberry farms.
The Kul Sharif mosque inside a Kremlin, the capital of Tatarstan where minarets and domes share a skyline.
A cool hill city of painted kampung villages and the closest base for the Bromo sunrise.
Lalitpur, the city of fine arts: a Durbar square of bronze casters and the Golden Temple.
The city of trees in Tohoku, Date Masamune's castle hill, the Tanabata festival and gyutan beef tongue.
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