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. Raven Travel Guides Germany include:

• 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.

Berlin

Visitors to Berlin could believe that almost anything is possible. History weighs on the city like no other place on earth. At the end of World War II, it was a ruin that had to be rebuilt or recreated, then was divided when the process was only half complete. It was then put back together and is now the most diverse of international cities in terms of taste, lifestyle and culture. There can be no more revealing human laboratory.

The better-known highlights have a significance based in Berlin's past, much of it events in living memory. But the world's most rebuilt city is also careful to preserve the signs of its frontier beginnings, its rise as the centre of Prussia, and the memories of the Nazi and Communist periods that led to ruin.

In about 170 museums, Berlin lays bare its past as a powerhouse of culture and technology and an oppressor of people, many of them its own population. The chief museums of art and history on Museumsinsel are world heritage listed. Its theatres, concert halls and opera houses make it a cultural magnet.