The world's greatest holidays for music lovers

Telegraph

01-03-2025

The death of the music industry may have been exaggerated. Figures released in January indicate that Britons spent more on recorded music in 2024 (£2.4 billion) than in any year since 2001.
And while streaming services account for 85 per cent of this expenditure, the resurgence of vinyl – 6.7 million LPs were sold in the UK last year, with major releases by Taylor Swift and Charli XCX proving popular – has helped keep the numbers healthy.
Of course, music is a many-faceted and wildly diverse thing, and there is much more to its magic than the passive experience of listening at home. Indeed, it can be an excellent reason for travel. And whether your personal taste extends to the 3am dancefloor rush in a busy Mediterranean club or the rather more cerebral sounds of an 18th-century composer, the following 10 holidays promise to carry you closer to the sounds that move you…
In search of Amadeus
The debate as to the greatest musician of all time is always subjective, and often deeply reductive, but the idea of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as a genius to eclipse all others has taken root with good reason. What this child prodigy achieved in just 35 years is almost beyond comparison – more than 800 classical compositions, including operatic wonders The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro, as well as his dying-breath masterpiece the Requiem. The majority of his most celebrated works were crafted in Vienna, but in many ways his story is forever tied to the Austrian city where he was born in 1756 – Salzburg.
How to do it: Salzburg hosts an annual Mozart Week (mozarteum.at) which sees its Mozarteum Orchestra delve into his catalogue; the 2026 festival is already scheduled for January 22-February 1. Martin Randall Travel (020 8742 3355; martinrandall.com) offers the event via a 'Mozart in Salzburg' tour – from £4,750 a head, flights extra (2025 price).
Keeping an ear on Ludwig
At roughly the same time – his date of birth is lost to history, but his baptism was on December 17, 1770 – another Germanic composer was turning inspiration into music some 450 miles to the north-west. Like Mozart, Ludwig Van Beethoven produced his best work in Vienna, moving to the city in 1792, and carving cultural touchstones such as his only opera, Fidelio (1805), and his glorious Ninth Symphony (1824) – both created despite an advancing deafness – while living among its palaces and perfume. But like Mozart, he is most easily traced in his birthplace; in his case, the Rhineside city of Bonn.
How to do it: The house where Beethoven was born is now preserved as a museum (beethoven.de/en/museum). It forms a key part of the five-day 'Music Tour Beethoven' itinerary sold by German travel company Augustus Tours (0049 351 563 480; augustustours.de). This can be arranged as a break for up to 10 people (price on request).
A night at the opera
Two centuries on, Vienna is as much a magnet for opera lovers as it was for Mozart and Beethoven – and amid the ongoing impossibility of visiting the temples to the genre in St Petersburg and Moscow, it is one of the best options for enjoying music's most hallowed art form. The key venue is the Staatsoper (wiener-staatsoper.at) – the State Opera House, which became the first building on the Austrian capital's circular Ringstrasse when it was constructed between 1861 and 1869. Though bombed during the war (and subsequently restored), its Neo Renaissance architecture is as spectacular as the performances within it.
How to do it: Kirker Holidays (020 7593 2288; kirkerholidays.com) offers a regular 'Wine & Opera in Vienna' break – a four-night group tour whose next edition (May 29) will include a trip to the Staatsoper for Bizet's Carmen. From £3,289 a head, with flights.
Deep sounds in the American South
So rich is the musical heritage of the Deep South that you can immerse yourself in three different genres in the space of a few hundred miles. Indeed, a journey which takes in the Tennessee cities of Nashville and Memphis, and their Louisiana cousin New Orleans, will offer the twang of guitars, the tinkle of pianos and almost 200 years of back-story. Nashville, of course, is the epicentre of country music, and celebrates it in detail at the enormous Country Music Hall of Fame (countrymusichalloffame.org). Memphis is one of the great cradles of both blues and rock, and keeps their dreams alive in the bars of Beale Street (not least BB King's Blues Club; bbkings.com/memphis) and Elvis Presley's Graceland home (graceland.com). New Orleans, meanwhile, was the birthplace of jazz. It still nods to its key changes in the holy space of Preservation Hall (preservationhall.com).
How to do it: Journeyscape (020 3883 7174; journeyscape.com) offers all three cities and styles in its 11-day 'Music of the Deep South' trip; from £2,110 a head, flights extra.
Et tout ce jazz…
Although jazz came to life in the bars and brothels of the Big Easy's red-light district in the 1900s, it has since 'gone legit' across the planet. One of its most joyful incarnations on European soil is Jazz à Vienne – a 15-day extravaganza which takes over the French town of the same name every summer (June 26-July 11 in 2025; jazzavienne.com). To be precise, it takes over the enormous Roman theatre in what is a glorious dot on the map of Isère, sparkling on the east bank of the Rhône. And while the festival attracts major stars – Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald both took to its stage – it is often most alluring down the bill; younger artists showing their virtuosity, with concerts running late into the night.
How to do it: A four-night stay at the Grand Hôtel de la Poste, flying from Luton to Lyon on July 8, costs from £360 per person, via Expedia (020 3024 8211; expedia.co.uk). Three-night festival tickets are €111 (seven nights start at €185; full-festival passes €355).
It's up to you, New York…
Rock has taken on many forms since its blossoming from its blues roots, and any number of cities – swinging London, Beatles-centric Liverpool, ever-inventive Manchester, ever-resilient Detroit, hair-metal Los Angeles – can offer sites from its past and present. Nonetheless, New York might easily seize the crown as its own, having witnessed, in the space of two decades alone, Bob Dylan's emergence in the Greenwich Village folk scene, the Bowery punk explosion which produced the Ramones and Blondie (among others), as well as the side-step into disco which coalesced under the lights at Studio 54.
How to do it: Walk On The Wild Side (walkonthewildsidenyc.com) offers a range of walking tours (from $45/£36) which deal in punk nostalgia, plus specific routes which seek out Big Apple luminaries Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, Patti Smith and the Beastie Boys. Bowery Boys Walks (boweryboyswalks.com) covers Dylan's Greenwich ($40/£32). A five-night dash to the four-star Sanctuary Hotel in Manhattan, flying from Heathrow on May 13, starts at £1,211 a head via Virgin Holidays (0344 472 9646; virginatlantic.com).
A rap and a hard place
As with rock, a whole swathe of cities can stake a claim to being the metropolitan fuel to rap's lyrical blaze, New York included. But two other celebrated entries in the American atlas have clear connections to hip-hop's fire, fury and sometime finesse. Los Angeles is one of them; the California cauldron in which (in particular) NWA stirred a potent gangsta-rap brew in the late Eighties. Atlanta provided a less angry, more tuneful (but no less successful) take on the genre, via the likes of Outkast, in the Nineties and Noughties.
How to do it: LA Hood Life Tourz (lahoodlifetours.com) takes hip-hop fans into rap hotbeds such as Compton, Watts and Crenshaw from $75 (£59); Hip Hop Tours Of Atlanta (hiphoptoursofatlanta.com) provides a similar service in the Georgia capital (from $113/£89 a head). Seven-night getaways to the Hollywood Roosevelt or the Grand Hyatt Atlanta – flying from Heathrow on May 3 in both cases – cost from £1,524 and £1,758 per person respectively, via British Airways Holidays (0344 493 0787; ba.com/holidays).
Swede dreams are made of this
If you prefer a rather more sugary form of music, pop has rarely been sweeter than in the honeyed hits of Swedish titans ABBA. You can, of course, watch holographic replicas of the four stars gyrating through the songbook at the Abba Voyage (abbavoyage.com) show in London, but for the most authentic take on their tale, you need to go directly to the source. ABBA The Museum (abbathemuseum.com) is a Stockholm treasure trove whose exhibits cover the divorces as well as the gold discs. Most importantly, it lets guests do karaoke takes on their favourite ABBA tracks with another virtual version of the band.
How to do it: Museum tickets start at 269 Krona (£20) a head. A three-night stay at the five-star Radisson Collection Strand Hotel, flying from Manchester to Stockholm on May 1, costs from £480 per person, with Last Minute (020 3386 8411; lastminute.com).
Over the wall, under the ground
It is a journey of around 350 miles from Bonn to Berlin, but the gulf between Beethoven and the music that soundtracked the German capital in the late Eighties and early Nineties feels interplanetary. True, at least two American hubs (Detroit and Chicago) were crucial in the development of techno as a nightclub floor-filler, but this most beat-heavy of genres really found favour in Berlin after the fall of its infamous wall in 1989 – disused buildings, warehouses and underground spaces being appropriated for massive dance parties which helped to reunite the youthful population(s) of a no-longer-divided city. Many of the clubs which thrived in those heady days are long gone, not least Bunker and E-Werk (Tresor exists, but in a different location; tresorberlin.com), yet the music still has a potency in Berlin which can make for late nights (and sore ears the following day).
How to do it: Get Your Guide (getyourguide.com) sells a 'Premium Underground Party Tour' which offers a glimpse of Berlin's 21st-century techno scene (from £124 a head). A three-night stay at the Titanic Comfort Berlin Mitte, flying from Birmingham on April 4, costs from £560 per person, with easyJet Holidays (0330 493 0787; easyjet.com).
Balearic beats and Spanish heat
Dance music has fractured into numerous sub-genres since its ascent from the club to the mainstream began in the Eighties, but some of the places most closely associated with its party-til-dawn ethos have stayed reliably on-brand, whatever the exact sounds pounding from their speakers. Ibiza is a case in point, and if the house music which once dominated its mega-venues has been outpaced by modern EDM (Electronic Dance Music), the Balearic archipelago's most fashionable island still understands how to do wild abandon.