I haven't heard that everyone is beating a path to see the sights in the City of Reading (Berkshire, UK), but we did a quick visit there recently and like all historic towns discovered that it has its points of great interest.
The town hall is a typical piece of over-the-top Victoriana, but a very interesting & imposing structure for that. (See picture above). The streets we walked down were of similar vintage but personally I find that the colorful modern shop fronts clash with the sober Victorian/Edwardian style of their upper stories, thus giving the contrasting retail ground floors a rather gaudy look.
The pictures below are from Norman and Romanesque Reading where a peaceful quietus reigns away from the street hustle and bustle and where the Abbey ruins contrast with the anonymous and soulless buildings of commerce.
But what struck me most about Reading was its cosmopolitan feel: People from just about all continents populated its streets. It is so cosmopolitan that I would say it's Babel in reverse, which is probably a good thing; provided people live and work together peacefully in a shared democratic environment where justice reigns.
