Wells, Somerset

England’s smallest city, or its second-smallest, if you insist on counting the City of London, which Wells would rather you didn’t. It owes its city status to a cathedral rather than a headcount, and its West Front still gathers a crowd of medieval statues above a market trading since the twelfth century.

It’s the sort of place visitors tend to fit into an afternoon from Bath, with a look at the cathedral and a pot of tea. But Wells holds far more than it lets on, and the trick is knowing where to look.

VoiceMap’s self-guided audio tours bring depth to the cathedral, where armoured knights joust on a fourteenth-century clock every quarter-hour, but they also lead you into Vicars’ Close, a complete medieval street built to keep the choirmen away from worldly temptation. A Blue Badge guide tells of the bishop who slew a dragon, while a ghost walk unfolds through the eyes of Walpurga, the Wells Witch. And if the Bishop’s Palace swans ring their bell for lunch, just hit pause.