The name itself is Old Norse: hǫrgr gata - street to a heap of stones. A cairn marked the path where a town would later grow. Harrogate stayed a cluster of separate villages until 1571, when William Slingsby discovered chalybeate spring water at the Tewit Well in High Harrogate. He noticed it tasted similar to the springs in the Belgian town of Spa - which gave the world the word "spa" itself. Edmund Deane published Spadacrene Anglica in 1626, advertising the medicinal properties. By the 18th century, wealthy and sickly visitors were pouring in. Cold, pungent, mineral-laden water became an industry. Hotels were built, then theatres, then gardens. The Stray - 200 acres of protected common reserved by Parliamentary act in 1778 to keep the springs accessible - still defines the town centre. The whole place is, in a way, a city of cure built around water nobody really wanted to drink.

Harrogate's heyday was the 19th century, and the town wears its Regency-Victorian bones beautifully. The local council long ago recognised what mattered: protect the old centre, accept that the period charm is the product. Walk the central streets and arcades and you find Bettys Tea Rooms - established by Frederick Belmont in 1919 and still owned by the same family - serving Fat Rascals (a Yorkshire scone-meets-rock-cake) and tea poured with stately ceremony. The Royal Pump Room of 1842 stands at the head of the Valley Gardens, the town's main park where the historic springs once bubbled (most are now capped or bottled). The Royal Hall of 1903, an Edwardian theatre designed by Frank Matcham, sits opposite the Harrogate Convention Centre - which makes the town, improbably, one of Europe's largest conference destinations.

Harrogate's character is harder to read than its architecture suggests. The Crime Writing Festival each July fills the Old Swan Hotel - Christie's hotel - with novelists who make their living from murder. The Literature Festival follows in October. The International Festival of June and July brings classical music. The Great Yorkshire Show in July - on the showground two miles east of town - draws hundreds of thousands to celebrate everything from prize bulls to sheep dog trials. And on Cheltenham Parade, where pubs alternate with curry houses, the small town reveals its larger ambitions. Indian, Thai, Italian restaurants line streets where the spa-takers once walked. Harrogate Spring Water is bottled commercially nearby; the breweries are Harrogate Brewing, Daleside, and Rooster's; Sing Gin is distilled seven miles west in Kettlesing. The town drinks better than most of England.

Harrogate makes an excellent base. Four miles east, Knaresborough perches above the gorge of the River Nidd - a 12th-century castle ruin, Mother Shipton's Cave (England's oldest tourist attraction by some accounts), a famous viaduct. Just north toward Ripon waits Fountains Abbey, the largest monastic ruin in Britain and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Almscliff Crag rises beside the road to Bradford. Plumpton Rocks lie off the road to Wetherby. Brimham Rocks - dramatic gritstone outcrops sculpted by ice and wind - are a short drive north. The Yorkshire Dales National Park begins thirteen miles away. York's walled medieval streets are an hour east. And the Yorkshire Museum in York holds the Harrogate Hoard - nearly 700 Viking coins discovered locally in 2007, which is the kind of detail this region drops casually into a footnote.