Delft, Netherlands

Delft sits in South Holland on the Schie canal between Rotterdam and The Hague, with roughly 105,000 residents. The 1246 Old Church leans two metres off vertical across its 75-metre tower, while the New Church, begun in 1496, holds the royal crypt where every Dutch monarch since William the Silent in 1584 is buried. Painter Johannes Vermeer was born here in 1632 and spent his entire life in the city. The Royal Delft factory, founded in 1653, is the last surviving 17th-century Delftware pottery still producing today.