1.   Almost every hill is crowned with a picture-perfect little walled village.

2.   Belle Ile was quite spectacular, a castle crowning a hill beside the sea, a vast estuary stretching beyond it, sand where the tide had just retreated.

3.   Ahead, across a gorge gouged by a crook in the Ottawa River, the Parliament complex crowned a hill with Victorian-Gothic extravagance.

4.   Directly ahead, another hill was crowned by the towers of Radda, the old capital of the Chianti League.

5.   You ascend slowly, floating in a white tube-tram that rises beside a white wall, up toward a gleaming white city crowning a hill.