Brighton is Britain's most exciting seaside city. With its cosmopolitan air, superb restaurants, feverish nightlife and abundance of culture, it defies comparison with anywhere else this side of the English Channel. For centuries it has been regarded as a pleasure dome, and that is not about to change.
The city grew from a fishing village into a fashionable resort when the Prince Regent (later George IV) built his extraordinary Royal Pavilion here in the early nineteenth century. That building, a fantastical confection of Indian domes and Chinese interiors, still stands at the heart of the city and remains Brighton's most iconic sight. The Regency architecture extends across wide squares and terraces, giving Brighton an elegance that most English seaside towns lost decades ago.
The seafront stretches for miles. The Palace Pier juts into the Channel with its amusement arcades and fairground rides, while the skeletal ruins of the West Pier stand as a melancholy counterpoint a little way along the shore. Behind the seafront, The Lanes are a tangle of narrow medieval streets packed with antique shops, jewellers and boutiques. North Laine, slightly further up, is the bohemian quarter: vintage clothing, record shops, vegetarian cafes and street art.
The Brighton Museum & Art Gallery and the eccentric Booth Museum of Natural History make rainy days productive. Kemptown, east of the centre, is the city's LGBTQ+ neighbourhood and has a more local, less tourist feel. For history with a different dimension, The Chattri memorial on the South Downs above the city commemorates the Indian soldiers who died in Brighton's WWI hospitals.
Brighton is fun, cosmopolitan and uniquely eccentric all year round. With the South Downs rising behind the city, it also makes a great base for exploring the Sussex countryside.