Oxford's honey-coloured colleges and spires make it feel like an extension of the Cotswolds itself, and a natural gateway into the wider region.
Woodstock has one of England's grandest palaces on its doorstep, while neighbouring Kidlington quietly claims the title of the country's largest village.
"Chippy" pairs a genuine working market town with one of Oxfordshire's most talked-about country retreats on its doorstep at Great Tew.
Large, small and wonderfully niche — the definitive guide to museums in the Cotswolds, the cities just beyond it, and the handful further afield genuinely worth the special journey.
Where LCR started over 21 years ago, Tetbury is a former wool town with Georgian streets and one of the densest antiques trades in the Cotswolds.
William Morris called Bibury the most beautiful village in England, and the quiet Coln Valley villages around it are just as rewarding.
Painswick has earned its nickname, "Queen of the Cotswolds," through a churchyard of legendary yew trees and one of England's few surviving rococo gardens.
Cirencester was Roman Britain's second city, and it still feels like a capital: a wool church, a private park larger than the town itself, and Roman history at every turn.
Minchinhampton pairs one of the Cotswolds' great open commons with a royal neighbour, while Nailsworth quietly punches above its weight for food.
Lechlade is where the Thames becomes a proper navigable river, and the Cotswolds meets the water in a genuinely different way from anywhere else in the region.
Cheltenham is the Cotswolds with a genuine cultural calendar: a Regency spa town of festivals, theatre and racing. And now the home of Luxury Cotswold Rentals.
Moreton-in-Marsh still runs the largest open-air street market in the Cotswolds, while neighbouring Blockley hides a surprising silk-mill past.
