Ten candlelit old towns made for slow evenings

Old towns keep old hours. Once the day-trippers file back to their coaches, the lanes empty, the lamps come on and the whole place reverts to what it was built for: walking slowly, eating late and talking nonsense over a second bottle. The ten below all share the essentials — stone underfoot, candlelight in the windows, dinner within a hundred metres of bed. Book somewhere inside the walls, not outside them; the entire point is stepping out after dark and having it all to yourselves.

A walled Venetian town crammed between black mountains and a fjord-like bay, all cats, campaniles and squares the size of living rooms. Cruise passengers own the mornings, so structure your day in reverse: swim and nap early, then emerge at 6pm when the gates quieten. Climb the fortress path at dusk for the bay-turned-mercury view, and eat squid ink risotto in a square barely wider than your table.

The best-preserved medieval core in northern Europe: turrets, merchant houses and lanes named after monks and short legs. Tallinn is at its most cinematic in December, when snow muffles the cobbles and the Town Hall Square Christmas market glows like an advent calendar. Skip the medieval-banquet restaurants aimed at stag parties and book a New Nordic tasting menu instead — the city's kitchens quietly outclass its reputation.

Painted houses stacked over the River Onyar, a cathedral with the widest Gothic nave on earth, and a Jewish quarter of stairways and dead ends built for wandering hand in hand. Girona takes Barcelona's crowds and simply declines them. Walk the medieval walls at golden hour for rooftop views to the Pyrenees, then eat seriously well — the city has a startling density of ambitious kitchens for its size.

A Tuscan town that kept its Renaissance walls and turned them into a tree-lined promenade — rent bikes and do the four-kilometre loop above the rooftops before dinner. Down below it's all traffic-free lanes, opera in Puccini's honour and an oval piazza built inside a Roman amphitheatre. Come in October, when the crowds thin, the light goes amber and the new olive oil arrives on every table.

A Saxon town in Transylvania where the rooftops have eyelid-shaped windows that genuinely appear to watch you cross the square. Sibiu's pastel old town is Habsburg-handsome, lively with students and remarkably cheap for its looks. Cross the Bridge of Lies at dusk — legend says it creaks under fibbers — then eat slow-cooked pork and local Fetească in a cellar restaurant. June's international theatre festival fills the squares with performers.

Georgian terraces the colour of honey, a curving river and enough Austen associations to make even cynics soften. Bath rewards an overnight stay: the day crowds leave by six, and the Royal Crescent by lamplight is the city at its best. Book the Thermae rooftop pool for after dark, eat early in a Walcot Street bistro, and skip the open-top bus — everything worth seeing is twenty minutes' walk apart.

A stone village coiled around a peak four hundred metres above the Riviera, its lanes too narrow for anything but footsteps and bougainvillea. Day-trippers from Nice swamp it between ten and five, so stay the night — the two hotels inside the village keep the evenings for guests. Watch the Mediterranean go pink from the exotic garden at the summit, then descend the Nietzsche path to the sea next morning.

Germany's medieval poster child, ringed by walkable walls and crowned by the Plönlein — the crooked yellow house on a forked lane that launched a thousand jigsaw puzzles. Day-trippers pour through until late afternoon, then vanish, leaving the lanes to overnighters. Join the Night Watchman's lamplit tour at 8pm — hammy, in the best possible way — then drink Franconian wine in a tavern that predates Columbus. December's Reiterlesmarkt is the fairy tale at maximum wattage.

Yes, the summer crowds are biblical — which is why you come in October, stay inside the walls and learn the city's second timetable. By 8pm the Stradun's limestone, polished by centuries of feet, gleams under the lamps and the alleys smell of grilled fish. Walk the full wall circuit at opening time, take the cable car up Srđ for sunset over the Adriatic, and drink wine at a buža bar cut into the cliff face.

A whitewashed Portuguese hill town wrapped in a complete castle wall, its lanes striped blue and yellow and dripping with bougainvillea. Óbidos was traditionally a wedding gift from Portuguese kings to their queens, which sets the tone nicely. Sip ginjinha — sour cherry liqueur — from an edible chocolate cup, walk the walls at dusk (no railings; hold hands for practical reasons), and stay in the castle itself, now a pousada. July brings a medieval festival.