The National Centre for Early Music

You're walking down Walmgate towards the bars and restaurants, and suddenly you slip into St Margaret's Church—a space that stopped being a place of worship centuries ago and became something arguably more transcendent: a concert hall devoted entirely to early music. The acoustics in here are genuinely special, the kind that make you understand why musicians travelled centuries ago. You'll catch everything from intimate lute recitals to full baroque ensembles, with the sort of acoustics that make even recordings of these pieces sound flat by comparison. It's the kind of place where you actually feel the vibrations of period instruments moving through the building.