Top Ten Global Cities for Romance

Paris - It's little wonder that so many wistful songs have been penned over the years about the city of light . Few cities leave the visitor with such vivid impressions, whether it's the drifting cherry blossoms in the tranquil gardens of Notre-Dame, the riverside quais on a summer evening, the sound of blues in atmospheric cellar bars, or the ancient alleyways and cobbled lanes of the historic Latin Quarter and villagey Montmartre. Even with all the tremendous pomp and magnificence of its monuments, the city operates on a very human scale, with exquisite, secretive little nooks tucked away off the Grands Boulevards and very definite little communities revolving around games of boules and the local boulangerie and café - trully a city for lovers.

Venice - The water-lapped palaces along the Canal Grande are just as the brochure photographs made them out to be, Piazza San Marco does indeed look as perfect as a film set, and the panorama across the water from the Palazzo Ducale is precisely as Canaletto painted it. The monuments which draw the largest crowds are the Basilica di San Marco - the mausoleum of the city's patron saint - and the Palazzo Ducale - the home of the doge and all the governing councils. Certainly these are the most dramatic structures in the city: the first a mosaic-clad emblem of Venice's Byzantine origins, the second perhaps the finest of all secular Gothic buildings. Even though this city is fast dissapearing beneath the water, its beauty and history lives on.

Prague - Prague (Praha) is one of the least "eastern" European cities you could imagine. Architecturally it is a revelation: few other cities anywhere in Europe look so good - and no other European capital can present six hundred years of architecture so completely untouched by natural disaster or war. The River Vltava (Moldau in German) divides the capital into two unequal halves: the steeply inclined left bank, which accommodates the quarters of Hradcany and Malá Strana, and the more gentle, sprawling right bank, which includes Staré Mesto, Josefov and Nové Mesto. Hradcany , on the hill, contains the most obvious sights - the castle itself, the cathedral and the former palaces of the aristocracy. Below Hradcany, Malá Strana (Little Quarter), with its narrow eighteenth-century streets, is the city's ministerial and diplomatic quarter, though its Baroque gardens are there for all to enjoy. Over the river, on the right bank, Staré Mesto (Old Town) is a web of alleys and passageways centred on the city's most beautiful square, Staromestské námesti.

Seville - Sevilla has three important monuments and an illustrious history, but what it's essentially famous for is its own living self - the greatest city of the Spanish south, of Carmen, Don Juan and Figaro, and the archetype of Andalucian promise. This reputation for gaiety and brilliance, for theatricality and intensity of life, does seem deserved. It's expressed on a phenomenally grand scale at the city's two great festivals - Semana Santa (in the week before Easter) and the Feria de Abril (which starts two weeks after Easter Sunday and lasts a week). Either is worth considerable effort to get to. Sevilla is also Spain's second most important centre for bullfighting , after Madrid.

Rome - Of all Italy's romantic cities, it's perhaps Rome which exerts the most compelling fascination. There's more to see here than in any other city in the world, with the relics of over two thousand years of inhabitation packed into its sprawling urban area. You could spend a month here and still only scratch the surface. As a historic place, it is special enough; as a contemporary European capital, it is utterly unique.

For the traveller, all of this is much less evident than the sheer weight of history that the city supports. There are of course the city's classical features, most visibly the Colosseum, and the Forum and Palatine Hill; but from here there's an almost uninterrupted sequence of monuments - from early Christian basilicas, Romanesque churches, Renaissance palaces, right up to the fountains and churches of the Baroque period, which perhaps more than any other era has determined the look of the city today. There is the modern epoch too, from the ponderous Neoclassical architecture of the post-Unification period to the self-publicizing edifices of the Mussolini years. All these various eras crowd in on one other to an almost overwhelming degree: there are medieval churches atop ancient basilicas above Roman palaces; houses and apartment blocks incorporate fragments of eroded Roman columns, carvings and inscriptions; roads and piazzas follow the lines of ancient amphitheatres and stadiums.

Florence - Since early in the nineteenth century Florence has been celebrated as the most beautiful city in Italy. Stendhal staggered around its streets in a perpetual stupor of delight; the Brownings sighed over its idyllic charms; and E.M. Forster's Room with a View portrayed it as the great southern antidote to the sterility of Anglo-Saxon life. For most people Florence comes close to living up to the myth only in its first, resounding impressions. The pinnacle of Brunelleschi's stupendous cathedral dome dominates the cityscape, and the close-up view is even more breathtaking, with the multicoloured Duomo rising behind the marble-clad Baptistry . Wander from there down towards the River Arno and the attraction still holds: beyond the broad Piazza della Signoria, site of the towering Palazzo Vecchio , the river is spanned by the medieval shop-lined Ponte Vecchio , with the gorgeous church of San Miniato al Monte glistening on the hill behind it.

Lisbon - A lively and varied place, it remains in some ways curiously provincial, rooted as much in the 1920s as the 2000s. Pre-World War I wooden trams clank up outrageous gradients, past mosaic pavements and Art Nouveau cafés, and the medieval, village-like quarter of Alfama which hangs below the city's São Jorge castle. Modern Lisbon, with a population of just over 3 million, has kept an easy-going, human pace and scale, with little of the underlying violence of most cities and ports of its size. It also boasts a vibrant, cosmopolitan identity, with large communities of ex-colony Brazilians, Africans (from Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde) and Asians (from Macao, Goa and East Timor). Many came over to work on two major urban development projects in the Nineties: the preparations for the European City of Culture in 1994 and the Expo 98 . Lisbon invested heavily in these ventures and the rejuvenation of the city with new road, hotel, metro and bridge schemes. Disused dockland has been reclaimed and communication links improved with several showcase pieces of architecture and engineering like Santiago Calatrava's impressive Gare de Oriente and his sleek fourteen kilometre-long Vasco de Gama bridge which links Lisbon airport to a network of national motorways. The focus is still firmly on the future with Portugal's successful bid to stage the European Football Championship in 2004, an event which will again turn the world's attention on the Portuguese capital.

New York - The most beguiling city in the world, New York is an adrenaline-charged, history-laden place that holds immense romantic appeal for visitors. Wandering the streets here, you'll cut between buildings that are icons to the modern age - and whether gazing at the flickering lights of the midtown skyscrapers as you speed across the Queensboro bridge, experiencing the 4am half-life downtown, or just wasting the morning on the Staten Island ferry, you really would have to be made of stone not to be moved by it all. There's no place quite like it.

You could spend weeks in New York and still barely scratch the surface, but there are some key attractions - and some pleasures - that you won't want to miss. There are the different ethnic neighborhoods , like lower Manhattan's Chinatown and the traditionally Jewish Lower East Side (not so much anymore); and the more artsy concentrations of SoHo, TriBeCa, and the East and West Villages. Of course, there is the celebrated architecture of corporate Manhattan, with the skyscrapers in downtown and midtown forming the most indelible images. There are the museums , not just the Metropolitan and MoMA, but countless other smaller collections that afford weeks of happy wandering. In between sights, you can eat just about anything, at any time, cooked in any style; you can drink in any kind of company; and sit through any number of obscure movies . The more established arts - dance, theater, music - are superbly catered for; and New York's clubs are as varied and exciting as you might expect. And for the avid consumer, the choice of shops is vast, almost numbingly exhaustive in this heartland of the great capitalist dream.

Barcelona - Barcelona is a progressive city, looking towards the rest of Europe for its inspiration and its innovations - the classic tourist images of Spain seem firmly out of place in Barcelona's bustling central boulevards and stylish modern streets. And style is what brings many visitors here, attracted by enthusiastic newspaper and magazine articles which make much of the outrageous architecture, user-friendly city design, agreeable climate and frenetic nightlife. Even the medieval Gothic quarter and its once-notorious red-light area have been swept up by the citywide renovation programme, which is still running at full tilt. As the new millennium starts Barcelona has continued to blossom from provincial city to putative European capital.

Edinburgh - Venerable, dramatic Edinburgh, the showcase capital of Scotland, is a historic, cosmopolitan and cultured city. The setting is wonderfully striking; the city is perched on a series of extinct volcanoes and rocky crags which rise from the generally flat landscape of the Lothians, with the sheltered shoreline of the Firth of Forth to the north. "My own Romantic town", Sir Walter Scott called it, although it was another native author, Robert Louis Stevenson, who perhaps best captured the feel of his "precipitous city", declaring that "No situation could be more commanding for the head of a kingdom; none better chosen for noble prospects."