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From the days of the Romans York has been the political and ecclesiastical capital of the North. Packed into its 14th-century city walls, York contains a microcosm of English history and architecture. If any place outside of London deserves to be put on a list of must-see places in England, York it is. I have been returning to York for 30 years, and recently returned again to see whether my convictions held up.

They did. York never loses its magic.

York is an easy two-hour train ride from London, with hourly trains from King’s Cross. From the arrival point at York Railway Station, the city quickly gives hint to its treasures. One of Victorian England’s great buildings itself, York Station was the largest train station in the world when it was built in the 1870s. You emerge from the station to face York’s crenellated 14th-century city walls.

York’s largely pedestrianized city center is a cornucopia of crooked alleys, broad tree-lined squares, narrow streets and surprising byways, some dating back to the 1300s. Now as then, York is a posh shopping mecca. High Street marques like Marks & Spencer receive plenty of competition from a dizzying array of specialty shops, boutiques, tearooms and eateries. A street market enlivens Newgate daily, while talented buskers amuse the pulsing crowds. On The Shambles, a cobbled lane named for medieval butchers’ shops, I spotted in one shop window the appropriate slogan Veni, Vedi, Visa: “I came, I saw; I did a little shopping.”

Like many ancient towns in Britain, York owes its origins to the Romans. They called it Eboracum and used the river port as both an administrative capital of this farthest outpost of the Roman Empire and as a military staging area for administering Hadrian’s Wall and governing unruly northern tribes. A bit of the Roman wall still stands on St. Leonard’s Place near the City Art Gallery. A visit to the undercroft of York Minster reveals Roman foundations as well.

Like so many Roman urban areas, Eboracum drifted into decline after the Roman departure in the 4th century. Its location on the navigable River Ouse, however, kept the town vital as a trading base. In the 9th century, alas, the Vikings discovered its prime location and relative wealth. During the Viking occupation of the 900s, Eboracum became Jorvik, a principal Viking port and control and command center.

The Viking Danes left a sure mark on the city. It was their language that called streets gaedes or gates, and their word for gates of the walled city, bar. At the Jorvik Viking Centre off Coppergate, you can ride in a time tunnel back to a quay of the Ouse in the Jorvik of 989. It is a remarkable recreation of Jorvik’s 10th-century daily life, smells and all. Then, ride through the actual archaeological laboratory of the dig on which Jorvik was recreated. It’s a fascinating multi-sensory story.

After the Norman arrival in the 11th century, William the Conqueror built a castle at York and the city officially entered the Middle Ages. What remains of the castle today is the keep, Cliffords Tower, rebuilt in the 13th century and now in the care of English Heritage. If you climb the mound and the ramparts of the tower, you’ll find remarkable views of the city in all directions. You are looking at the medieval city, within the most completely intact medieval city walls in the country.

Down at street level again, York has all the accouterments of a fashionable modern town. But its plethora of medieval buildings and unaltered, narrow streets and alleys give York a more pervasive sense of medieval English town life than anywhere else I know. I stopped at Café Nero for a cappuccino.

York has many attractions, but three top the list. Most striking—and most visible from anywhere in the city—is majestic York Minster. The largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe, the Minster was completed in 1472 after 250 years of craftsmen’s work.

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