Known as Londonderry in Britain and Derry in Ireland — the name you use tends to signal your politics — this is the second city of Northern Ireland and one of the finest walled cities in Europe. The seventeenth-century walls are still complete, measuring 1.5 kilometres in circumference and standing six metres high in places. You can walk the full circuit for free, looking down over both the old city within and the Bogside below.
The walls withstood a siege in 1689 that lasted 105 days and killed 8,000 of the inhabitants — the longest siege in Irish and British history. The city's nickname, the Maiden City, comes from the fact that the walls were never breached. The St Columb's Cathedral, built in 1628, still holds the cannonball in which the terms for surrender were fired into the city during the siege.
The Tower Museum tells the story of Derry from its sixth-century foundation through the siege, the Troubles, and the peace process — it won European Museum of the Year in 1993. In the Bogside below the walls, the Bogside Murals and the Museum of Free Derry document the civil rights movement and the events of Bloody Sunday in 1972. The Peace Bridge across the Foyle, opened in 2011, has become the city's most recognisable modern landmark.
The city is a good base for day trips to the Giant's Causeway on the north coast (about an hour's drive) and to County Donegal across the border in the Republic. City of Derry Airport is about 10 kilometres away, and Belfast is an hour by road or rail.