Pori, Finland

Due to its yearly jazz festival – increasingly rock- and pop-oriented in recent years – PORI has become one of the best-known towns in Finland. For one week each July, its streets are full of music and the 160,000 people who come to hear it. Throughout the rest of the year Pori reverts to normality as a small, quiet industrial town with a worthy regional museum and a handful of architectural and historical oddities. The central section, despite its spacious grid-style streets, can be crossed on foot in about fifteen minutes.