What’s the best vacation for an urbanist? Exploring a new city, of course. So here’s a slideshow of 42 pictures of Albany, New York, taken from a visit last summer.

Albany is a unique city. Since it’s the capital of New York and core city to a metro area of nearly a million people, it has some big city amenities, including some skyscrapers. But it’s deceptively small; that metro area includes Troy and Schenectady, which are sizable urban cores on their own. Albany the city has fewer than 100, 000 people, and although downtown is nice, it’s tiny.

I expected Albany to be a peer to Richmond, VA, but in reality I found it to be much more similar to Harrisburg, PA. All nice cities with strong cores, but in different size classes.

Albany does have some truly beautiful historic architecture. Unfortunately much of it was destroyed by the awful urban renewal era state capitol complex, but much of what survives is extremely high quality.