On Two Towns by Hilaire Belloc — Read

The wide countrysides of Europe sum themselves up in central cities: municipalities inheriting from Rome. The lesser towns group round the larger; the bishops of the lesser suffragan to metropolitan of the greater cities, as it was fixed in the Roman order which Constantine inherited from Diocletian and which everywhere stamps the West with the framework of the Fourth Century. These great cities are not only the heads and inspirers of their provinces, they are also the gathering places of armies; the contrast and the fellowship between them is especially seen when either is the capital of a wide plain below a mountain range. Then each becomes the depot and the goal in turn of invading forces, each stands for the national fortunes upon either side of the passes. So, for the great Alps, you have Augsburg and Milan; so for the Vosges, Strasburg and Nancy; so for the Pyrenees, Saragossa and Toulouse.

No two cities in Europe are more representative of their provinces or stand better for symbolising the nature of their land. From the towers of each the long line of the Pyrenees may be traced, especially in early autumn mornings when the sky is clear with the approaching cold and when the first snow has fallen upon the summits. From Toulouse the dark Northern escarpment runs along the southern horizon in a wall, surprisingly level and seeming tiny in its long stretch or belt of grey; from Saragossa, much further off and more rarely the white strips and patches can be caught behind the nearer foothills, the whole in a glare of sunlight full upon it, like a desert tilted up; you just see them over dry, treeless plains, and immediately the sun rises they are lost in the hot haze.