Canterbury

Canterbury. Where murder made a martyr and Chaucer's pilgrims told their tales. In 1170, four knights split Thomas Becket's skull on the Cathedral floor, and within three years the Church had canonised him – which tells you something about the medieval talent for turning catastrophe into destination.

The visitors who rush the Cathedral and leave are missing most of it. Christopher Marlowe was born in these streets, a playwright who may or may not have moonlighted as a spy. Alice Benden was betrayed, starved in a dungeon, and burned at the stake for her faith barely a century later. The Roman walls that ring the city have stood for 1,700 years, which is rather longer than most of the archbishops who sheltered behind them.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours move through all of it at your own pace – the Cathedral's crypt, the Westgate Towers, the dark lanes where heretics and pilgrims once walked the same cobbles. Plug in your earbuds at Christchurch Gate, and let Canterbury tell you what the pilgrims were really after.