France

France contributes the coast that taught Europe to take holidays, the courts that taught it manners, and an unusually complete run of spa, wine and gastronomic towns. Its Riviera entries carry two histories at once — the winter cure of the 1820s and the summer season invented in 1923 — and the country supplies more of the Grand Tour's approach leg than any other. Paris appears as a Global Capital; almost everything else here is small.