Coımbra

There's a song most of the world has hummed without knowing where it came from. April in Portugal, the jazz standard, began life as a fado called Coimbra é uma lição - Coimbra is a lesson - and this hillside city above the Mondego has been teaching it for seven centuries.

Portugal's first capital, then home to its oldest university, Coimbra wears its history in tiers - but the real curriculum isn't in the lecture halls. It's sung. Unlike Lisbon's mournful solo, Coimbra fado belongs to the students: black-caped, guitar in hand, performing longing rather than sorrow outside cafés that have kept the same tables for a century.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours climb with you past the University's Baroque library and the fortress-like Sé Velha, then slip into the quieter Coimbra - the vanished Jewish quarter behind Largo da Portagem, and the steep Back-Breaker street students have climbed since the Middle Ages.