By Bill Wilson, Deputy Editor
Our San Miguel de Allende has gathered yet another accolade. Fourth prettiest city in the world according to a story that recently appear in the prestigious magazine, Architectural Digest. We know that San Miguel de Allende has garnered many other magazine awards over the years especially “Best Small City.” While we are especially proud of our World Heritage city designation but pretty city? There’s no question while walking in town during the Golden Hour our city has a certain magic. Our jardin with its manicured trees and our churches especially the La Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel are beautiful. And during many of our many fiestas the city lights up and shines. Our people, Sanmiguelenses, also help make San Miguel a very special place.
Here is the magazine listing for San Miguel de Allende (below is a list of the 20 bests)
"San Miguel de Allende, Mexico… charming, enchanting, a jewel box of a town—these are all descriptors commonly attributed to San Miguel de Allende, the colonial-era city in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. It’s been voted the top city in the world twice and is in itself an UNESCO World Heritage Site, thanks to its exquisite examples of 16th-century Spanish Colonial Baroque architecture. The town’s art festivals, galleries, and top-notch food scene also make it a beloved destination." Notes the magazine, "Creating a definitive list of the most beautiful cities in the world is a downright impossible task. Depending on who you ask, you’d yield wildly different results."
"As expected, Frank Lloyd Wright judged a city’s beauty on architecture (he was a fan of Chicago), while Ezra Pound was taken by the poetry of a place’s sky at night (“And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there…” he wrote). Walt Whitman said it’s the people that make a city great, and Aristotle pointed out that “a great city is not to be confounded with a populous one."
Explains AD writer Amelia Mularz, "All this to say, our list is by no means definitive. Twenty cities are far too few to sum up all the world’s beauty. But we have taken a stab at highlighting some supremely spectacular places, from the remote beaches of the Caribbean to the cultural capital of Japan. Some cities are hubs for contemporary architecture, while others have preserved a time long past. A number of places on this list are densely populated, while at least one has a population in the mere thousands—a nod to Aristotle’s criteria."
What makes a city beautiful?
"And there are endless ways to answer this question, for the purpose of the AD list, we considered architecture, cultural treasures, historical relevance, as well as natural appeal. The best cities offer something that can’t be found anywhere else. Destinations from all over the globe made the list, some for possessing all of the above in a single place," notes the article. Here is the list:
Adelaide, Australia
Tallinn, Estonia
Portsmouth, Dominica
San Miguel de Allende
Antigua, Guatemala
Singapore
Paris, France
Chefhaoven, Morocco
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Luxor, Egypt
Istanbul, Turkey
Kyoto, Japan
Barcelona, Spain
Cape Town, South Africa
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Florence, Italy
Djenne, Mali
New York City, USA
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Jaipur, India
Commenti