Japan and Europe, written by the people who operate them.

Italy stacks Alpine passes, Renaissance city-states and near-North-African heat into one narrow peninsula, and a fast train crosses the whole of it from Milan to Naples inside five hours.

• Rome 5 Layers, not periods
• Florence 3 A small city that changed European art
• Venice 3 A city with no wheels
• Positano 2 One road, forty kilometres, no hurry

France is the most regionally varied country in western Europe, and its TGV network means the Atlantic, the Alps and the Mediterranean are each about three hours from a single Paris base.

• Paris 5 Six storeys of limestone and one river
• Nice 2 A working city with the Riviera attached

Spain runs from green Atlantic Galicia to near-desert Almería, and its AVE network connects Madrid to Barcelona, Seville and Málaga in about two and a half hours each.

• Barcelona 3 A grid, a Gothic core and a beach
• Madrid 2 Three great museums and a late clock

Switzerland is small enough to cross in four hours and vertical enough that the crossing climbs through vineyards, lakes and glaciers, all on trains that connect to the minute.

• Interlaken 2 Junction between Thun, Brienz and the Jungfrau
• Lucerne 1 Covered bridge, two mountains, four-armed lake
• Zurich 1 Banking city with a swimmable lake

Greece is a mainland of mountains and classical sites attached to roughly 6,000 islands, and almost every itinerary comes down to how you split your nights between the two.

• Athens 2 Ruins at the centre, sea at the end of the line
• Santorini 2 A drowned volcano with villages on the rim

Austria is a long, narrow country that runs from the Danube plains around Vienna to the glaciers of the Tyrol, and a single railway line ties the whole of it together.

• Vienna 2 An imperial capital that still runs on time

The Netherlands is compact enough that almost every town worth seeing sits within ninety minutes of Amsterdam by train, which makes a single base more sensible here than in any other European country.

• Amsterdam 2 A merchant city drawn as three arcs

Portugal is 560 kilometres of Atlantic coast with an interior most visitors never reach, and the whole country fits comfortably into ten nights without rushing anything.

• Lisbon 2 Seven hills, one river, endless staircases