Győr, Hungary

Győr sits at the confluence of the Danube, Rába and Rábca rivers in northwest Hungary, roughly 130,000 residents strong and halfway between Vienna and Budapest. Its 1170 basilica shelters the gold-bust reliquary of Saint Ladislaus, while the Old Town preserves the densest Baroque core surviving anywhere in the country after 18th-century rebuilding. A 1551 iron cockerel weather vane atop Saint Michael's Chapel still records a 1529 Turkish siege. Since 1994 an Audi engine plant has anchored the local economy. How a town this old keeps reinventing itself is the real story.