Born by the Moselle River as Augustus Treverorum back in 16 BC, Germany’s oldest city has managed to keep hold of its Roman past. Trier has a city-wide UNESCO World Heritage Site, protecting incomparable monuments like the largest Roman gate outside Italy, a palace hall built by Emperor Constantine and a sensational bathing complex. You …
Just 15 kilometres north of Nuremberg in Middle Franconian you’ll find the city of Erlangen. This city’s story really begins in the 1680s when the Edict of Nantes was evoked, expelling the Huguenots from France. Many were welcomed to Erlangen, and so a planned Baroque city was constructed to accommodate an exploding population. So Erlangen …
A hair’s breadth from the French border in Southwestern Germany, Saarbrücken mixes industrial history with the splendour of the Counts and Princes of Nassau-Saarbrücken who ruled the region for centuries. Two people more than any left their mark on Saarbrücken, 18th-century Prince of Nassau-Saarbrücken, William Henry, and his architect Friedrich Joachim Stengel. For three decades …
In North Rhine Westphalia, Mönchengladbach is a city made up of a group of boroughs around the historic towns of Gladbach and Rheydt. The thing that unites these settlements is the abundance of parkland; Mönchengladbach is bursting with green spaces, like the Bunter Garten, which cuts Gladbach in two. Some of these parks are medieval …
The Saxon city of Zwickau sometimes goes by the moniker “Automobil- und Robert-Schumann-Stadt” (City of Cars and Robert Schumann). And while not exactly concise, the name sums up two of Zwickau’s fortes: The 19th-centuy composer Robert Schumann was born in Zwickau and his birthplace has an absorbing museum about his life and relationship with the …
Anyone charmed by medieval history will be in dreamland in the UNESCO city of Regensburg, where 1,500 listed monuments have stood the test of centuries. In the days of the Holy Roman Empire, Regensburg hosted the Imperial Diet, and you can stand in the very place where some of Europe’s most powerful men would assemble. …
On the right bank of the Rhine between Cologne and Düsseldorf, Leverkusen has only existed as an urban centre since 1975 when a group of towns and districts in the Bergisches Land were incorporated into a city. One Leverkusen name that will be familiar to all is Bayer, the chemical and pharmaceuticals multinational, founded here …
In 1648 Osnabrück helped bring the curtain down on the Thirty Years’ War when the Peace of Westphalia was signed between Sweden and the Habsburgs. Even now this city in Lower Saxony is known as Friedensstadt (City of Peace), and you can go to see where the treaty was signed at the historic Town Hall. …
Before 1844, Ludwigshafen wasn’t much more than swamps, a fortress and an assortment of villages on the left bank of the Rhine. But industrialisation and the rise of chemical manufacturers like BASF gave birth to a city just across the river from Mannheim. Named in honour of Ludwig I of Bavaria, Ludwigshafen is sometimes overlooked, …
An former royal seat in Lower Saxony, Oldenburg has a legacy left by generations of counts, dukes and grand dukes. Studying Oldenburg’s aristocratic history can be tricky as the House of Oldenburg had German, Danish and Russian branches. Just to illustrate, the future Russian Tsar Alexander II lived at Oldenburg’s Prinzepalais for a time in …