Kraków

Every hour on the hour, a trumpeter in Kraków's tallest tower plays a call that stops mid-note — honoring, seven centuries on, a watchman silenced by an arrow while warning the city. The gesture explains the town: Europe's grandest medieval square, ringed by a garden where the walls once stood, in a city that treats memory as a civic instrument, still playing.

The sensible traveller circles the Rynek's Cloth Hall and waits under the tower for the interrupted hejnał; climbs Wawel for the castle, the cathedral and the dragon's den below; and gives the evening to Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter reborn in candle-lit courtyards and zapiekanka windows. The solemn day apart is Auschwitz, ninety minutes away: go with a guide, in silence, because being near obliges.

The Guide's honesty: pierogi portions assume Polish winters — order across the table, not per person —; the Rynek's horse carriages and the salt-mine crowds are the tourist channel: both fine once, neither the city; and Kazimierz at night is joy on the same streets where absence lives — hold both truths, and tip the klezmer band.