Bordeaux

The water mirror catches the Place de la Bourse and holds it upside down in a sheet of still water two centimetres deep — the largest reflecting pool in Europe, and children run through it barefoot while the 18th-century façade watches from both directions. Bordeaux in France has shed its soot. The limestone is clean now, glowing gold along the Garonne, and the Chartrons quarter has reinvented the old wine-merchant warehouses as galleries and natural wine bars.

Bordeaux's historic centre — the Port of the Moon — was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007, the largest urban area to receive the designation at that time. The city's neoclassical architecture dates predominantly from the 18th century, when the wine trade funded a building programme that lined the Garonne with grand limestone façades. The Miroir d'Eau, designed by Michel Corajoud and installed in 2006, covers 3,450 square metres of the quayside with a thin film of water that alternates between mirror and mist. The Cité du Vin, opened in 2016 in a building designed by XTU Architects, is an immersive wine museum with exhibitions spanning global viticulture. The Chartrons district, once home to wine négociants, now houses contemporary art galleries, concept stores, and some of the city's most inventive restaurants. Bordeaux produces over 700 million bottles of wine annually from its surrounding appellations.