🇬🇧 England
York
York (population 209,900; in North Yorkshire, England; at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss, 30 km from the North Sea coast and 185 km north of London) is one of the most historically layered cities in England: founded as the Roman fortress city of Eboracum in 71 CE (the largest Roman fortress in Britain — the 2nd Legion fortress that became the capital of Roman Britain north of the Humber; the city where the Roman Emperor Constantius Chlorus died in 306 CE and his son Constantine the Great was proclaimed emperor by the army, making York the city where the Roman emperor who would Christianize the empire was declared — the most politically significant event in York's Roman history); conquered by the Danish Great Heathen Army in 866 CE and renamed Jorvik (the Viking city of Jorvik (866-954 CE) was the capital of the Danelaw — the Danish-controlled zone of northern and eastern England: the Jorvik that the Vikings built in the Coppergate area (modern Coppergate Walk) was the largest Viking settlement outside Scandinavia, and the archaeological excavations of 1976-1981 (the Coppergate excavations by the York Archaeological Trust) uncovered the most complete and best-preserved Viking Age urban archaeological site in the world — the waterlogged conditions preserving not only the wooden Viking buildings but the organic materials (leather shoes, cloth, food, human parasites, timber structures) that normally decay); a medieval city with the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe (the York Minster — the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Saint Peter in York: the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe by floor area (5,500 m²) and volume; the building whose 14th century Great West Window (the "Heart of Yorkshire" window: 24 lights, 8 m wide, 7.9 m tall) and 14th-15th century Great East Window (the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in the world (2,000 figures, 311 scenes from Genesis and Revelation): 56 panels, 23.8 m × 9.4 m — the area of a tennis court) represent the apogee of English Perpendicular Gothic stained glass); a city enclosed within the most complete circuit of medieval city walls in England (the York city walls — the "Bar Walls": 3.4 km of walkable medieval walls, following the line of the original Roman fortress walls (the Roman stones are visible in the foundations of the medieval walls at several points), with four intact medieval gatehouses (the "Bars": Bootham Bar (the north gate, the only surviving Roman arch in any English city gate), Monk Bar, Walmgate Bar (the only surviving English city gate with its barbican intact — the defensive outwork in front of the gate) and Micklegate Bar (the ceremonial southern gate through which English monarchs traditionally enter York).