Bath, England:

VistBathVisit Bath is the official tourism website for the city that Jane built, and the Austen connections are numerous, although of course any student of Austen knows she didn’t much care for the city. It’s somewhat understandable because she grew up in her father’s rectory in Hampshire and was happy there until he declared in 1800 that he was retiring and moving his wife and two daughters to Bath (in Somersetshire), which they did in 1801. Although Jane was familiar with Bath and had family there, I think her opinion was “nice to place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.” Curiously many of the tourist attractions associated with Austen in Bath make no attempt to hide her displeasure with the city.

But to most modern visitors, Bath is a beautiful city with its consistent Georgian appearance of honey-colored stone. Its attractions include the Roman Baths, the Assembly Rooms, Bath Abbey, the Royal Crescent, the Circus, Sydney Gardens, the Kennet and Avon Canal, Pulteney Bridge and the Prior Park Landscape Gardens, to name just a very few.

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