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.