The beautiful little English city named the prettiest in the whole world

Chester had more buildings with a ‘golden ratio’ of features (Image: Getty ) An English city home to five Greggs bakeries have beaten famous beauty spots like Venice, Paris and Florence to be crowned the ‘most attractive’ in the world. Former Roman settlement Chester topped a survey which used a ‘golden ratio’ of measurements to determine the aesthetic beauty of buildings. Despite rivals boasting the likes of the Eiffel Tower and Michelangelo’s David, this city home to less than 80,000 people came out on top. Chester is certainly historic, and can chart its founding back to 79AD when it was the site of a fort built by the Romans. The original Roman walls, later adapted by the Normans, still exist to this day. The city is famous for its black and white buildings which were built in the Victorian era in a Jacobean half-timbered style. Chester topped the survey ahead of Venice (Image: Getty ) And it seems Chester’s historic architecture swung the vote for the researchers at Online Mortgage Advisor. According to TimeOut the study used Google Street View to measure hundreds of streets and more than 2,400 buildings from cities around the world. The system worked by taking measurements of each building and calculating the proportion between the longest and shortest sides comparing it to a most attractive ‘golden ratio’. Chester conquered the board with an average score of 83.7 percent pipping the romantic destination of Venice which managed 83.3 percent. British locations took three spots in the top five, with London scoring third and Belfast taking fourth, with another Italian city, Rome, coming fifth. Despite its renaissance beauty, even Florence couldn’t win against Chester (Image: Getty ) Barcelona scored highest for Spain, with Prague finishing just behind and New York becoming the top destination architecturally in the USA. Manchester placed last by the measurements for the UK, alongside Beijing in China which finished last for world destinations. Online Mortgage Advisor said on their website the golden ration (1:1.618), ‘reflects a set of proportions that have intrigued and been studied by mathematicians for millennia’. The golden ration is not just found in architecture, it is also said to have been recored in paintings, books, music flags and in some disputed cases it also occurs in nature. Famous buildings and monuments said to have achieved the golden ration of aspects include the Great Pyramid at Giza and the Parthenon.