Greetings from ASHEVILLE North Carolina

AND THE TOP HONOR GOES TO ...

- BY Derek Burnett PHOTOGRAPHS BY Rachael McIntosh

MOLLY AND MEHERWAN Irani took a leap of faith when they moved with their 3-year-old daughter, Aria, from San Francisco to Asheville, North Carolina. It was 2005, and relocating from a major international city to an Appalachian town seemed, Molly recalls, “a wild experiment.” But a few weeks after settling into their new home, they attended a downtown event called the Shindig on the Green, where local folk and bluegrass musicians entertained a motley mix of tourists and locals who lounged on picnic blankets or danced freely. Little Aria spotted another girl her age from across the field, ran to her and embraced her.

“They spent the entire night dancing in each other’s arms,” Molly remembers. “And surrounding them was a community square dance. In that crowd, holding hands, were punk-rock line cooks and elderly people, all different walks of life. And I thought, I don’t know that I’ve seen this happen anywhere else. This is why we’re here.”

Asheville and its environs—Western North Carolina, as the area is known—gets its hooks into people like that. People move there to rediscover community, to go back to the land, to make art or music, or just to live in a place surrounded by spectacular scenery while still enjoying world-class cultural offerings. These are just some of the reasons we have named Asheville the Nicest Place in America 2025, after receiving a record number of nominations for the city and surrounding area.

“It’s a unique and amazing place,” says Cheryl Antoncic, who visited Asheville from Hartford, Connecticut, to do a little hiking in 2018 and fell enough in love with the place to move there and open a barbecue restaurant.