Baroque architecture is the most theatrical style in Western history, built to project power, inspire awe, and make the viewer feel small in the best possible way. The cities below did not just get a few impressive Baroque buildings: they were shaped by the style in ways that define their current identities.

The Cities

Rome

Rome is where the Baroque was invented, and the city remains its greatest showcase. The style emerged here in the early seventeenth century, driven by the Catholic Church's Counter-Reformation ambition to overwhelm doubt through magnificence. Gian Lorenzo Bernini's work alone, the colonnade and baldachin of St Peter's, the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona, the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria, and the elephant-obelisk in front of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, constitutes a contribution to urban design that no single architect has matched anywhere. Francesco Borromini's rival buildings (San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza) pushed the style's geometric invention to its limits. Walking Rome's historic centre is a Baroque education that no museum can replicate.

Best for: travelers who want to understand the Baroque at its origin and in its densest concentration.

Vienna

Vienna's Baroque period was the high imperial era of the Habsburg dynasty, and the architecture reflects that ambition without restraint. The Upper and Lower Belvedere palaces (designed by Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt in the early eighteenth century) are among the finest secular Baroque complexes in Europe. The Karlskirche, designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and completed in 1737, is one of the great Baroque churches anywhere: its twin columns reference Trajan's Column in Rome, its oval dome is exceptional, and its setting on the Karlsplatz makes it read as urban theatre. Schönbrunn Palace, the summer residence of the Habsburgs, extends Baroque palace design to a scale that rivals Versailles. Vienna treats the Baroque not as heritage but as the natural register of civic ambition.

Best for: travelers who want Habsburg-era imperial Baroque at the grandest possible scale, in palaces and churches alike.

Prague

Prague has one of the densest concentrations of Baroque architecture in Central Europe, accumulated during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the Habsburg patrons rebuilt the city after the Thirty Years' War. The Church of Saint Nicholas in Malá Strana (designed by Christoph and Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer) is one of the finest Baroque interiors in Europe: its painted ceiling by Johann Lucas Kracker covers 1,500 square metres and its nave creates a spatial drama that is genuinely overwhelming. The Clementinum complex, the Strahov Monastery Library, and the facades lining the Malá Strana square all belong to the same era. Prague's Baroque sits on top of its Gothic foundations in a way that makes the contrast productive.

Best for: travelers who want Baroque in a Central European context, layered over Gothic and Renaissance foundations.

Valletta

Valletta is Europe's smallest national capital and one of its most complete Baroque cities. Built almost from scratch by the Knights of St John after the Great Siege of 1565, and completed over the following two centuries, the city's street grid and major buildings were designed as a coherent whole. The Co-Cathedral of St John is one of the most extraordinary Baroque interiors in Europe: its nave floor is entirely composed of tombstones, its chapels were commissioned separately by each of the eight langues of the Knights, and it contains Caravaggio's largest surviving canvas, The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. The city is small enough to walk in a day but rewards much longer.

Best for: travelers who want Baroque urbanism in its most complete and coherent form, in a city most Europeans have not yet visited.

Turin

Turin was the capital of the Savoy dynasty and was rebuilt as a Baroque city in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with a discipline and coherence that reflects its role as a European royal court. Guarino Guarini's Chapel of the Holy Shroud (1694) is one of the most technically extraordinary Baroque structures ever built, its interlocking arches creating a dome that defies the logic of its own weight. Juvara's Basilica di Superga (1731) sits on a hill above the city as a secular and religious statement of dynastic ambition. The Piazza San Carlo, Turin's central square, is one of the great Baroque urban spaces in Italy, its twin church facades creating a formal entrance that has no equivalent in northern Italian urban design.

Best for: travelers interested in Baroque urbanism as city planning rather than just individual buildings.