Tour Audio a York

York is the most layered small city in England. The Romans built Eboracum here in 71 AD as a legionary fortress, and the Emperor Constantine was proclaimed in this spot in 306 AD. The Vikings took it in 866 and called it Jorvik, establishing a trading settlement whose excavated remains you can still walk through at the Jorvik Viking Centre on Coppergate. Then the Normans arrived, built two castles, and the medieval street pattern hardened into the cobbled lanes that visitors thread through today.

The Shambles is the street everyone photographs, a medieval lane of overhanging timber-framed buildings so close together that the upper floors nearly touch overhead.

It was once butchers' row, the hooks for hanging meat still visible on some facades. Now it's all tourist shops, but don't let that put you off the rest of the city. The Bar Walls, York's intact circuit of medieval fortifications, offer a raised walk around the city that changes the whole sense of scale. The Minster, meanwhile, contains half the medieval stained glass surviving in England.