Bury St Edmunds is one of Suffolk's best market towns: prosperous without feeling smug, historic without being embalmed. Its centre is compact, handsome, and unusually coherent, with Georgian shopfronts, old coaching inns, a working market, and the smell of brewing never very far away.
The town grew around the shrine of St Edmund, the martyred Anglo-Saxon king who gave Bury its name. The medieval abbey was once one of the richest in England; today the broken flint walls of Bury St Edmunds Abbey sit in public gardens beside St Edmundsbury Cathedral, St Mary's Church, and the Norman Tower.
This is a town for unhurried wandering. Start at Angel Hill, drift through the abbey gardens, look into Moyse's Hall, then end with a pint at The Nutshell or the Old Cannon Brewery. It makes an easy day trip from Cambridge or Ipswich, but it is pleasant enough to justify a night.