The 20 Best Towns in The World

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.

Every wall, staircase and doorway in this Rif Mountains town is washed in shades of blue, a tradition with disputed origins that's turned the entire medina into one continuous wash of colour.

Cats doze in doorways and potted plants spill over blue-painted steps, with barely a corner that doesn't reward a second look.

Founded as a 15th-century fortress town, its alleys were never built for cars.

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.

Pastel-painted colonial buildings and crumbling Spanish Baroque church ruins fill this former capital, framed on clear days by the smoking cone of Volcan de Fuego.

Cobblestone streets laid out in a strict grid by 16th-century Spanish planners still define the town today.

Climbing a nearby volcano for sunrise, with Antigua's rooftops spread out below, is the classic local excursion.

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.

Cobblestone streets in this 16th-century sugar-trade town are lined with candy-coloured colonial houses, many still lived in by the families who've owned them for generations.

Vintage American cars from the 1950s, kept running through decades of improvisation, cruise past pastel facades and a crumbling bell tower overlooking the town.

Live music spills from open doorways most evenings.

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.

Saffron-robed monks file silently through the streets at dawn to collect alms, a centuries-old ritual that still happens daily in this Mekong River town.

Gilded temple roofs and French colonial shopfronts sit side by side along streets largely protected from development by UNESCO status.

It also serves as the natural base for visiting Kuang Si Falls' turquoise pools nearby.

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.

Wedged in a valley at the foot of the active Tungurahua volcano, Baños has built a reputation as Ecuador's adventure-sports hub, with canyoning, white-water rafting, mountain biking and Andes-edge zip-lining all based out of town.

The 'Route of the Waterfalls' cycling or driving route strings together a dozen cascades, including Pailón del Diablo's thundering drop into a narrow gorge.

A fortified Atlantic port town with whitewashed, blue-shuttered buildings and windswept ramparts, Essaouira trades the desert heat of Marrakech for sea breeze, fresh seafood grilled dockside, and some of Morocco's best windsurfing and kitesurfing conditions.

Its 18th-century medina, also UNESCO-listed, is smaller and calmer than Fes or Marrakech, with a strong arts and music scene reflected in its galleries and the annual Gnaoua music festival.

A laid-back diving town on the Gulf of Aqaba, Dahab trades Sharm el-Sheikh's resort scale for a mellow, backpacker-friendly waterfront lined with low-key restaurants right on the reef edge.

It's best known for the Blue Hole, a dramatic underwater sinkhole that's become one of the world's most famous — and most dangerous for unqualified divers — dive sites, alongside gentler reef diving and snorkeling directly off the shore in town.

A distinctly German-colonial coastal town where half-timbered buildings sit oddly against Atlantic surf and encroaching Namib dunes, Swakopmund has become Namibia's adventure-sports hub.

Sandboarding and quad-biking on the dunes at the town's edge, alongside skydiving and dolphin cruises, give it a livelier, more activity-driven scene than its quiet colonial streets suggest.

It's also the natural staging point for trips to the Skeleton Coast.

A small colorful island town connected to the mainland by a short causeway, Flores serves as the main gateway to Tikal but has enough charm — cobbled streets, lakeside cafés, pastel buildings — to justify a night or two beyond being a transit stop.

Built on the site of the last independent Maya kingdom to fall to conquest, in 1697, it sits on Lake Petén Itzá, where sunset boat rides round out a low-key stay before or after the ruins.