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.

Trier

World-heritage Trier its considered Germany's oldest city. It was one of the leading centres of the Roman empire in the 3rd and 4th centuries and the remains of a Roman hall, walls, the monumental Porta Nigra gateway, bath complexes and an amphitheatre survive.

The great Romanesque cathedral of St Peter and the delicate Gothic Liebfrauen-Basilika are the most prominent of the city's medieval buildings. But there are also restored town houses, the Marktkirche St Gangolf and an early tower-house built of rubble from the early Roman walls.

It's possible to stroll through the levels of the vast Kaiserthermen bath complex, the Porta Nigra and the amphitheatre to see how this northern Roman city worked. The Rheinisches Landesmuseum displays other Roman remains, including colourful mosaics and the painted replica of a towering grave column. A model shows what Roman Trier, much bigger than the medieval city, looked like.