Lincoln

One of the great gothic cathedrals of Europe, its west front a cliff of carved stone and its central tower, when it still had its spire, the tallest structure in the world for two hundred years. Inside, hunt for the Lincoln Imp, a small grinning demon carved high in the Angel Choir that legend says the Devil left behind. Vast, dark and worth a whole afternoon.

Best shot The floodlit west front, or the towers rising over the rooftops from Steep Hill.

• Touristy

A Norman castle you can walk the walls of, holding an original Magna Carta and, more chilling, a Victorian prison run on the "separate system": its chapel is fitted with individual upright stalls so no inmate could see another, a coffin-sized box for each soul. Public hangings once drew crowds to these walls. Grim and gripping.

Best shot The tiered stalls of the separate-system prison chapel, each its own wooden box.

• Adults only

One of the steepest streets in England, a cobbled medieval run of timber-framed and stone houses, independent shops and old pubs climbing from the lower town up to the cathedral. Murder on the calves, gorgeous the whole way. Go down, not up.

Best shot The cobbled hill dropping away below the timbered fronts, low sun down the street.

• Touristy

A Roman gateway from the 3rd century still standing over the road, said to be the oldest arch in Britain that traffic still drives through. You will pass under two thousand years of stone without a ticket or a queue.

One of the oldest surviving domestic buildings in England, a stone house of around 1150 that stood at the heart of Lincoln’s medieval Jewish community, a community that suffered the 1255 blood libel of "Little Saint Hugh", a false and murderous antisemitic lie that led to executions. A beautiful, quietly heavy building. Read the history before you judge the postcard.

• Quiet

A steep, worn stone stairway climbing between high old walls from the lower town towards the cathedral, dark and green and dripping, one of the most atmospheric corners of the city. Half the ghost walks end up here for a reason.

Best shot The worn steps rising between the high mossy walls, in flat green light.

• Solo-friendly

The ruined shell of the medieval bishops’ palace tucked below the cathedral, once one of the grandest houses in England, now roofless halls and undercrofts open to the sky. English Heritage, quiet, and a good bleak counterpoint to the cathedral above.

Best shot The roofless great hall with the cathedral rising behind it.

• Quiet
• Solo-friendly

A hotel that has stood between the castle and the cathedral for some six hundred years, all antiques, grandfather clocks and creaking corridors, right in the heart of the old upper city. Faded, grand and exactly where you want to be.

• Quiet
• Adults only

A small boutique hotel in a former school building right by the castle gates, dark and comfortable, a minute from both the castle and the cathedral. The best-placed bed in the upper town.

• Quiet

A Georgian manor house in gardens a few minutes east of the city, calm and old-fashioned, with fires and a good dinner. For when you want the country-house hush after a day on the hill.

• Quiet
• Adults only

A tiny, much-loved old pub in the shadow of the castle wall, named, cheerfully, for those who "struggled" at the end of the rope on the gallows just above. Great ale, a beer garden under the ramparts, and a name that tells you exactly where you are.

• Solo-friendly
• Adults only

A beautifully restored medieval timber-framed pub on Steep Hill, low beams and small rooms and a good list of local ales. One of the oldest buildings on the street, and a fine place to get your breath back on the climb.

• Adults only

A cosy, low-ceilinged restaurant on Steep Hill doing proper pies and old-school puddings across a cellar and a warren of little rooms. Comfort food after the climb, cathedral at the top.

• Solo-friendly

Reckoned the oldest pub in Lincoln, dating back to the 1600s, small and dark and unpretentious, a locals’ pub with real fires and no theme. The antidote to the tourist stops up the hill.

• Solo-friendly

A proper old tea and coffee merchant on Steep Hill, chests and tins and the smell of a hundred loose-leaf teas, weighed out by the ounce as if the last century never happened. Buy something black and smoky to take home.

• Solo-friendly
• Quiet

A rambling secondhand bookshop stuffed with the usual towers of the old and the odd, strong on local history and the properly obscure. Give it time.

• Solo-friendly
• Quiet

A serious antiques dealer in a fine old house on Steep Hill: clocks, silver, curiosities and the odd genuinely strange object behind the glass. Window-shop even if the prices are for someone else.

• Solo-friendly