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.

Nuremberg

Nuremberg reached a peak in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. The wealth and confidence of the city's independent-minded commercial class and guildsmen grew and the city made strides in art, science and publishing. The work of painters, sculptors, mathematicians and builders of this period survives. Albrecht Dürer became perhaps the leading Renaissance painter north of the Alps.

Dürer's house, now a museum, is among the preserved city houses, in which the half-timbered style is prominent.

The castle Kaiserburg overlooks the old town, as it has done since medieval times. The two parishes of the city, around its great churches St Sebald and St Lorenz, were united in the 14th and 15th centuries by great wall, of which long stretches and mighty towers remain.
Nuremberg was also the scene of war crimes trials after World War II. The courtrooms where the prisoners were tried are preserved as part of a museum of modern international justice.