Bath in 3 days

Royal Crescent (the 30-house curved terrace of uniform Bath stone façades designed by John Wood the Younger (1767–1775): the most celebrated Georgian building in Britain: the 30 houses form a perfect segment of an ellipse (158m long, 30 bays wide): the entire row shares a uniform Palladian façade (the identical arrangement of Ionic pilasters, sash windows and Bath stone dressings across all 30 houses: the effect of unity and grandeur is achieved by treating the entire terrace as a single palatial composition): the houses behind the façade are individually varied in size and plan. No. 1 Royal Crescent (the museum house at the west end — the most complete recreation of an 18th-century Georgian townhouse interior in Bath: the breakfast room, the study, the bedchamber and the kitchen are all furnished as they would have been in 1776, the year the house was first occupied, with the most complete collection of Georgian domestic objects in Bath).

The Circus (the circular street of 33 Bath stone houses designed by John Wood the Elder — begun 1754, completed 1768 (Wood died in 1754 and the project was completed by his son): the three equal arcs of 11 houses each, forming a complete circle of uniform Georgian townhouses (the diameter of the Circus is exactly 318 feet — the same as the diameter of the Pantheon in Rome, a deliberate reference that John Wood incorporated as part of his Masonic and antiquarian interest in ancient architecture): the Ionic, Doric and Corinthian pilasters (the three orders on the three stories: Doric on the ground floor, Ionic on the first floor, Corinthian on the top floor — the same order sequence as the Colosseum in Rome). Notable former residents: William Pitt the Elder (Prime Minister of Great Britain), David Livingstone (the African explorer), Thomas Gainsborough (the portrait painter). The acorn ornaments on the roofline parapet: the Masonic symbols (acorns represent King Solomon's oak in Freemasonry — John Wood was a Freemason).

Jane Austen Centre (40 Gay Street — the museum dedicated to Jane Austen's relationship with Bath: Austen lived in Bath from 1801 to 1806 (moved by her father's sudden decision, a decision that caused Jane considerable distress — she is recorded as having fainted when told of the move): the period of her Bath residence was almost completely unproductive as a novelist (no novels were completed in Bath — the creative silence is the subject of ongoing debate among Austen scholars: the most common interpretation is that the noise, expense and social demands of Bath society were uncongenial to her quiet, domestic creative life): she set Northanger Abbey (1817, written 1798–1803 — the novel that is specifically a satire of the Bath social season, the Assembly Rooms, the pump room and the Gothic novel craze) and Persuasion (1817 — set partly in Bath, with the Concert Rooms (the Upper Assembly Rooms) scene as one of the most important scenes) in Bath.

Pulteney Bridge (1774 — designed by Robert Adam (the Scottish architect of the Adelphi Terrace in London and of numerous Scottish country houses) for Sir William Johnstone Pulteney who needed to connect his Bathwick estate (east of the Avon) to the city: one of only four bridges in the world with shops lining both sides of the full span across the water (the others: the Rialto in Venice (1591), the Ponte Vecchio in Florence (14th century) and the Krämerbrücke in Erfurt (1325)): the bridge has the Palladian style of three arches with Venetian windows and a projecting central bay — the most elegant bridge in Britain). From the Grand Parade (the riverside terrace west of Pulteney Bridge): the view of the bridge arch, the Avon weir (the curved weir immediately downstream of the bridge — the most photographed weir in England), and the Bath Abbey tower above the rooftline: the most photogenic Bath postcard view.

The Pump Room (the 1799 assembly room above the King's Bath — the most famous room in 18th-century English social history: the room where the fashionable world of Georgian Bath came to drink a glass of the hot spring water (the "pump" of the Pump Room delivered the geothermal water directly to the room — the water at 42°C (slightly reduced to 38°C for drinking) believed to cure gout, rheumatism and infertility), listen to the Pump Room Trio (the live classical music ensemble that has performed in the Pump Room since 1703 — the oldest continuously performing ensemble in Britain), and conduct the social business of the Bath season. Now a restaurant: the three-course lunch and afternoon tea (the Bath cream tea: the scone with clotted cream and strawberry jam — served "Devon style" (cream first, jam on top) in competition with the "Cornwall style" (jam first): Bath falls on the Devon side of the debate).

Prior Park Landscape Garden (the National Trust garden on the south side of the hill above Bath (Ralph Allen Drive — the garden created by Ralph Allen (the Bath stone quarry owner and postmaster who made his fortune from the Georgian development of Bath — the Bath stone (the warm honey-colored oolitic limestone from the Combe Down quarries above Bath) that clads every Georgian building in the city was Allen's product) with advice from the landscape architect Lancelot "Capability" Brown and the poet Alexander Pope: the 28-acre garden in the "English Landscape" style (the informal, apparently natural arrangement of water, woodland and lawns contrasted with the formal Baroque gardens of the Continent): the Palladian Bridge (the 1756 Bath stone bridge over the lake — one of only four Palladian bridges in the world (the others: the Wilton House bridge in Wiltshire (1737 — the original), the Stowe Landscape Garden bridge (1738), and the Tsarskoe Selo bridge in Russia (1774))), and from the highest point of the garden: the panoramic view of the entire Bath UNESCO World Heritage Site from above.

Bradford-on-Avon (the "Broad Ford on the Avon" — the market town 13km west of Bath in the Avon valley: the most completely preserved pre-Georgian English stone town accessible from Bath: the Saxon Church of St Laurence (c. 700 CE — the most complete surviving Anglo-Saxon church in England: the narrow nave, the high walls, the carved angel corbels and the simple round-headed windows: the church was lost (converted to a school and a charnel house) for 1,000 years and rediscovered by the antiquary Canon Jones in 1856), the Bradford-on-Avon Tithe Barn (the 14th-century agricultural barn of the Shaftesbury Abbey: 51m long, the most complete surviving medieval tithe barn in England, with the original timber cruck roof trusses), the medieval bridge with the tiny lock-up (the domed "blindhouse" on the bridge used as the town jail in the 18th century), and the weavers' houses (the 17th-century clothiers' houses on the hillside above the river — the buildings of the Bradford wool trade).

Bath Skyline Walk (the 6-mile National Trust circular trail on the ridge of hills immediately south of Bath — the most comprehensive view of the UNESCO World Heritage Site from above: the hill walk starts from Bathwick and climbs through beech woodland (the ancient beech wood of Bathampton Wood — the mature beech trees with their smooth grey bark and the autumn gold (October) or spring green (April–May) leaf cover: the most beautiful seasonal woodland accessible from Bath) to the ridge at 180m above the city (the panoramic view of the Royal Crescent, the Circus, the Abbey tower and the Avon valley from the ridge: the view that makes clear why the UNESCO designation covers the surrounding hills and not just the buildings below — the harmony between the Georgian city and its landscape setting is the fundamental quality of the UNESCO designation). The walk continues to the Prior Park Landscape Garden overlook, the Sham Castle (the 1762 fake Gothic "ruin" built by Ralph Allen on the hillside as a view-object from his town house below) and back through the Bathampton meadows.

Upper Assembly Rooms (Bennett Street — the 1771 Robert Adam assembly rooms where the fashionable world of Georgian Bath gathered for the weekly balls (the Tuesday ball in the Ballroom (the largest room in Bath at 30m × 12m, with the original crystal chandeliers), the card parties in the Card Room, and the concerts in the Tea Room): the rooms where Jane Austen set the famous Concert Room scene of Persuasion (the scene where Anne Elliot encounters Captain Wentworth for the first time after years of separation — the most emotionally charged scene in any Austen novel). Now the Fashion Museum (the most important collection of historic costume and dress in the UK — 100,000 items from 1550 to the present): the most important single collection of Georgian court dress, 18th-century waistcoats and Victorian ball gowns in the world.