Islamabad

Islamabad is unusual: it's a city that was designed and built on purpose in the 1960s as the new capital. The grid runs in sectors named by letter and number (F-7, G-9, etc.), and the original modernist scheme is still mostly intact. The Margalla Hills frame the entire city to the north — you can be hiking in pine forest twenty minutes from anywhere downtown. Faisal Mosque, finished in 1986, is one of the largest in the world and is shaped like a Bedouin tent. Old neighbor Rawalpindi is 20 minutes south and is everything Islamabad isn't — chaotic, old, bazaar-dense.