GREAT PULTENEY STREET, in the English city of Bath, is a grand affair - an 18th-century statement in stone. It's also the legacy of a property crash. Two centuries ago, development stopped. So today, the street is still an island flanked by open spaces - a sports ground on one side, a park on the other - and two side streets leading nowhere.
What happened? When construction of the avenue began in 1788, Bath was riding a rising tide of property speculation. But in 1793, with England at war with revolutionary France, there was a spectacular banking crash followed by deep recession. The money dried up, bankruptcies were the order of the day, and Great Pulteney Street was just another casualty.
Bath oozes with anecdotes like that: the past creeps up on everybody. Tales are told, explanations given, insights offered. Without realising it, visitors are coaxed into gentle learning curves.
Bath's focus is its elegant Georgian streetscape - street after street of classical buildings. Touted as an architectural masterpiece, the entire city is a World Heritage site. But visitors can dabble in a little ancient history too - courtesy of the Romans and their 2,000-year-old temple and bathing complex. Jane Austen, who lived in Bath and depicted the city in her novels, brings a literary dimension, and the focus is on philately at the Postal Museum at No 8 Brock Street, from where Britain's first Penny Black stamp was sent.
Bath isn't pretentious either. Just take an open-top bus tour and see how the subject of classical architecture is tackled. Approaching the Circus - the city's famous ring of three-storey buildings - a guide skilfully drew the distinction between the column types on the building's facades. Doric was 'smooth and a bit boring'; Ionic was 'sort of curly'; Corinthian was 'all leafy and flowery'.
Bath plays host to two million tourists annually, and its Festival Trust stages all kinds of events to draw visitors throughout the year. It's worth timing a trip to coincide with at least one of them, the best-known being the Bath International Music Festival, which this year runs from May 21 for more than two weeks. Hard on its heels comes the Bath Fringe Festival, starting on May 28. July will offer the Guitar Festival, featuring some of the world's leading players, while August is for Shakespeare and November for Mozart. And Bath will see in the millennium with a black-tie fancy-dress ball for 8,000 guests.