Instead of London: Bath, the Georgian City Where England Made Itself Elegant

London is vast, frenetic, expensive and magnificent. But if you're looking for elegant England — that of crescent-shaped squares, thermal baths, afternoon tea and manicured parks — Bath is your destination. An hour and a half by train from Paddington, this UNESCO World Heritage city is a jewel of Georgian architecture where every street seems designed to be beautiful.

The Roman Baths are the ancient heart of Bath: a first-century AD bathing complex that is extraordinarily well preserved, with the Great Bath still filled with emerald-green water rising hot from the natural spring. The museum tells the story of the place through artefacts, projections and a narrative that brings Roman daily life vividly alive. Next door, the Thermae Bath Spa offers modern thermal bathing with a rooftop pool from which you enjoy views across the city.

The Royal Crescent — the half-moon of thirty Georgian houses unified by a monumental façade of Ionic columns — is perhaps the most elegant architectural ensemble in England. The lawn in front is the public space where the bathonians come to read, picnic and play cricket. The Circus, nearby, is the other great creation of the Wood family: begun by John Wood the Elder, who died shortly after the first stone was laid, and completed by his son John Wood the Younger (the same architect behind the Royal Crescent) — a circular square inspired by the Colosseum, with three orders of columns surrounding a garden of ancient plane trees.

Bath Abbey, the perpendicular Gothic church, has a west façade where sculpted angels climb and descend ladders towards heaven — an image from the dream of Bishop Oliver King, who commissioned the rebuilding in 1499. The interior is a forest of stained glass that floods the nave with light.

The city is also bound to Jane Austen, who lived here for five years and set Persuasion and Northanger Abbey in its streets. The Jane Austen Centre recounts her life in Bath with period costumes and recreations of Georgian society.

Eating in Bath is a pleasure: from the traditional English breakfast to Sally Lunn Buns (the oldest buns in England, served in the city's oldest premises) to contemporary restaurants using Somerset ingredients. Prices are lower than London but not cheap: Bath is a prosperous city.

The surroundings offer dreamy English countryside: the Cotswolds villages are thirty minutes away, Stonehenge an hour, Bristol fifteen minutes by train. Bath is the perfect base for a different kind of England.