The most beautiful cities in Germany

Germany’s most beautiful cities and towns stand among the best places to visit in the European Union. They span almost the full range of European variety.

• There are cities with Roman origins and remains such as Trier, Cologne, Regensburg and Mainz.
• Medieval cities such as Nuremberg, Erfurt, Bamberg and Worms and the half-timbered Harz region towns of Goslar, Quedlinburg and Wernigerode.
• Renaissance showpiece cities such as Lübeck, Augsburg or Bremen.
• Cities with Baroque survivals, including Dresden, Heidelberg or Passau.
• Plenty of German cities have beautiful palaces on their streets or nearby, like Potsdam, Munich, Stuttgart, Würzburg and Weimar.
• The great cathedrals such as Cologne, Regensburg, Bamberg, Mainz, Erfurt, Worms, with countless other churches, sometimes in Romanesque but more commonly in the Gothic style. The münster of Ulm has the tallest spire of them all.
• Museums of culture and art among world’s best, including Deutsches Museum, Deutsches Nationalmuseum, Alte Pinakothek and the Pergamonmuseum.

All these places can be reached by train and bus (Quedlinburg is on a branch line). All offer a range of hotels, hostels, guest houses and other types of accommodation. All are very walkable and, like most German towns and cities, are really best seen on foot. But trams and buses help get people to and from hotels or attractions and for the bigger centres, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Nuremberg, there are fast regular options in the form of S-bahn and U-bahn trains and light-rail transport.

Landscapes & outdoors

It is possible to generalise about the German landscape. In their travels visitors will find the north is flat, the middle and much of the south is rolling country. The southern border areas comprise the Alps, their glacial forelands and their foothills. The exceptions to this pattern are few, such as the Harz of Sachsen-Anhalt, the Eifel south of Cologne and the Erzgebirge on the Czech border near Dresden – all low mountains.

Activities

Three natural features have impressed themselves on German life: the mountains, the forests and the rivers.

The rivers travel north-west (the Rhine, Neckar and Moselle), north (the Weser, the Elbe and, on the east frontier, the Oder) and south-east (the Danube). Long before the arrival of railways the rivers were vital to trade and portage. The larger rivers today are perfect for cruising – the Rhine and Moselle, the Elbe through Saxony, the Main and the Danube around Passau. Their valleys have also become popular routes for cyclists to travel. The Alps early established their Europe-wide attraction for climbers and skiers and now hundreds of thousands of visitors come to Germany each year to enjoy them. The forests are magnets for hikers – notably the Black Forest (Schwarzwald), the Böhmerwald and the Thüringer Wald.

Inspiration

But these joys are a small part of the impression left on the German imagination. The fairy tales (Märchen) of the Grimms and the poetry and fiction works of the Romantics are about the mystery, fear and magic of the forests. Folk beliefs and witch legends have been inspired by the weird rocks of the Harz. The 18th and 19th century literature and music so close to the German soul came from a longing for the landscape. There was a reaction against urban circumstances and the industrialisation that came so late to Germany – but when it came, it came fast, a rude shock to a country still forming and used to being divided into small principalities. 

Much of the Richard Wagner’s later work was inspired by the slopes of the Alps (including time spent in Switzerland). This passion he shared with his patron the Bavarian king Ludwig II and it found expression in the plots and sets of his musical dramas, notably the Ring cycle and Tannhäuser. It was the same in Leni Riefenstahl’s first film – as an actor – Der heilige Berg, in which mystical depictions on the peak were key images in director Arnold Fanck’s cinematography. Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain makes it clear the mountain is a separate world from the lowlands where different rules apply.

The forest world of the Romantics – and the fairy tales – is also a different sphere of enchantment and horror, influenced by folklore and a necessary test to be braved by heroes and heroines. The themes go back past the medieval period and are as old as human myth, but the Romantics refreshed themselves at the well of medievalism and continued questing for the forest that still lay at the boundaries of their known environment.

Water’s elemental power was also a source of enchantment and cleansing. The Lorelei legend of the Rhine and the water-sprite heroine of Friedrich de la Motte Fouque's Undine depict beings who spend much of their time in a different world. For Wagner, the theme of the Nibelung legend behind the Ring des Nibelungen came from the treasure that was hurled back into the Rhine and so could not belong to any man.

Outdoors organisations

The websites of the German national associations for hiking, mountaineering and cycling have no English options and do not translate well in browsers. It will be better to try pursuing links through home organisations. There are more than 100 German national parks and the Naturparke Deutschland website translates quite usefully with lists of parks, maps and background information.

The Deutscher Alpenverein site will be of some use when translated in the browser, providing some  tips on alpine hiking, trail difficulty, maps, climbing, huts and chalets. Memberships for the more than 350 locally based sections cost between €50 and €100 a year and include benefits for accommodation in DAV huts and chalets.

For sailing and windsurfing interests some useful information can be gleaned from the Deutscher Segler-Verband site.

Cycling

The national cycling federation Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrrad-Club has regional branches that can be excellent centres for travel information and offer bicycle hire. The ADFC main website does not translate well (brief notes plus a policy statement are available in English). But there is a map of regional ADFC centres and a guide to more than 400 local information centres (click the ‘ADFC vor Ort’ link under the Über Uns menu).

The Bett+Bike scheme – basically a directory of ADFC-accredited bicycle-friendly accommodation including hotels, B&Bs and campsites – has a useful cycling website with an English version and a link to the ADFC touring portal with sponsored tours and other information. This link translates tolerably well in Google Chrome. The listings are available as an app at the website.

The bicycle routes are many, the most popular being the 420km Donauradweg or Ulm-Regensburg-Passau ride, which also extends about 30km into Austria. A list of dozens of major cycle routes with descriptions is available through the interactive map at the Destination Germany site.

The European Cycling Federation website has a list of useful links and social media channels.