York

Founded as Eboracum in AD 71 at the meeting of the Ouse and the Foss, it became the capital of Britannia Inferior, and later of Deira, of Northumbria, and of Scandinavian York in turn. In the Middle Ages it was the ecclesiastical centre of northern England and grew rich on wool; in the nineteenth century it became a railway hub and a confectionery town. The minster, the castle and the city walls are all Grade I listed. German bombers hit it in the Baedeker Blitz, gutting several historic buildings, and restoration ran into the 1960s.