The 11 Best Towns in Europe

Oia is the northernmost village on Santorini and the best known, with its white-washed Cycladic architecture, blue-domed churches, and cliffside position above the caldera.

It is particularly famous for its sunset, which draws crowds from across the island to watch the sun sink into the Aegean.

Hallstatt is a tiny lakeside village in the Austrian Salzkammergut, wedged onto a narrow shelf between steep mountains and the water.

Its salt mine has been worked for around 7,000 years, making it one of Europe's oldest continuously exploited industrial sites, and the Iron Age culture excavated here is named after the village.

Pastel Renaissance houses stack up from the shoreline in a place barely a few streets deep.

Positano is the Amalfi Coast's poster child: a wall of peach, rose and terracotta houses stacked impossibly steeply between the cliffs and a dark-sand beach.

The classic view, the whole town glowing above Spiaggia Grande, is best from the coast path or from the ferry pulling out.

Below the view it's all lemon groves, boutiques and long seafood lunches.

The Vltava River loops almost completely around this medieval town, wrapping its red-roofed old town and Renaissance castle in a natural moat.

A 13th-century castle tower rises above the rooftops, and its viewing gallery gives the single best angle over the whole horseshoe-shaped town below.

Narrow cobbled streets, largely untouched by wartime damage, still follow their original medieval layout.

Half-timbered houses in candy-bright colours line the canals of this Alsatian town's La Petite Venise district, their upper floors leaning out over the water.

Flower boxes crowd almost every windowsill from spring through autumn, adding another layer of colour to the vivid facades.

The town's mix of French and German influence, a legacy of Alsace changing hands repeatedly, gives it a character unlike anywhere else in France.

Ronda is a dramatic Andalusian city built on a rocky plateau divided by a 120-metre-deep gorge, over which the 18th-century Puente Nuevo bridge arches in an astonishing feat of engineering.

The combination of Moorish old town, bullring, and vertiginous cliff-edge position makes Ronda one of Spain's most striking cities.

A row of 17th-century weavers' cottages called Arlington Row, built from honey-coloured Cotswold stone, forms one of the most famous streets in England.

A shallow trout stream runs directly alongside the row, with ducks and grazing sheep completing a scene that looks almost too tidy to be real.

William Morris once called Bibury the most beautiful village in England, and the description has stuck ever since.

A canal-laced old town at the northern tip of one of Europe's cleanest lakes has earned Annecy the nickname "Venice of the Alps," its Thiou River canals lined with flower-draped, pastel houses and the small stone Palais de l'Île moored mid-stream.

Snow-capped peaks rise directly behind the water, and a lakeside path leads out to swimming spots and quieter viewpoints beyond the old town.

Siena is a medieval city in the heart of Tuscany that has preserved its Gothic character more completely than any other city in Italy.

Its fan-shaped main piazza, the Piazza del Campo, is the venue for the famous Palio horse race held twice yearly, and its cathedral, the Duomo, is considered one of the finest Gothic buildings in Italy.

A tiny medieval town entirely enclosed by 14th-century walls an hour north of Lisbon, Óbidos was once a traditional wedding gift from Portuguese kings to their queens.

A single cobbled main street runs between whitewashed, bougainvillea-draped houses to a hilltop castle, and the full circuit of the ramparts can be walked in under an hour for views over the surrounding countryside.

Slovenia's slice of Adriatic coastline is barely 47 kilometers long, but Piran packs a genuinely Venetian-feeling old town onto its tip — narrow stone lanes, a central square named for local violinist Giuseppe Tartini, and a bell tower modeled directly on St Mark's in Venice.

Salt pans just outside town have been harvested the traditional way for centuries, and a walk along the old town walls gives views to Italy and Croatia both.