Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Museums
Hamburg
The Cap San Diego in Hamburg is the largest operational museum cargo ship in the world, and it is moored at the Überseebrücke in the middle of the harbor. The white ship with a red hull once carried cargo and a few passengers between Hambu…
Theme parks
Baden-Baden
The Caracalla Therme (Caracalla Spa) in Baden-Baden is the modern thermal bath of Germany's most famous spa town, on the edge of the Black Forest. It sits in the historic bath quarter next to the Friedrichsbad, and its round domed hall, ou…
Landmarks
Hamburg
The Chilehaus in Hamburg is one of Germany's most famous office buildings and a landmark of brick expressionism. Its dark clinker walls form a sharp point at the eastern corner that looks like the bow of a ship. It has been part of a UNESC…
Caves
Iserlohn
The Dechen Cave (Dechenhöhle) in Iserlohn is one of Germany's most beautiful show caves, set in a wooded valley where the Sauerland hills meet the Ruhr area. A guided tour of about 40 minutes leads through winding passages full of stalacti…
Museums
Bremerhaven
The German Emigration Center (Deutsches Auswandererhaus) in Bremerhaven is an immersive museum about emigration and immigration, built on the very harbor where millions of Europeans boarded ships for America. You walk through a recreated q…
Museums
Bochum
The German Mining Museum (Deutsches Bergbau-Museum) in Bochum is one of the largest mining museums in the world and one of the essential things to do in the Ruhr region. Beneath its towering green headframe, it tells the story of coal, ore…
Monuments
Koblenz
The Deutsches Eck (German Corner) in Koblenz is the headland where the Moselle River flows into the Rhine, and one of Germany's most recognizable landmarks. A colossal equestrian statue of Emperor William I towers over the tip, while Ehren…
Museums
Dortmund
Step out of Dortmund's main station and you are practically at the door: the German Football Museum is the German Football Association's national museum and tells the story from Bern 1954 to Rio 2014 on two exhibition floors. Here you find…
Museums
Hamburg
The German Port Museum (Deutsches Hafenmuseum) in Hamburg is an open-air museum on the working waterfront of one of Europe's biggest ports. Set on the quay of the Hansahafen in the Kleiner Grasbrook district, it combines a protected brick…
Museums
Dresden
The German Hygiene Museum (Deutsches Hygiene-Museum) in Dresden is one of Germany's most unusual museums: not a medical collection but a museum about the human being, covering the body, health, emotions and society. Its white 1930 building…
Museums
Berlin
The German Museum of Technology (Deutsches Technikmuseum) in Berlin's Kreuzberg district is one of the largest technology museums in Germany and among the most popular things to do in Berlin, with more than 700,000 visitors in 2023. Set on…
Old towns & squares
Dinkelsbühl
Dinkelsbühl is one of the best-preserved medieval towns in Germany, a postcard-perfect stop on Bavaria's Romantic Road between Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Nördlingen. Behind an almost complete ring of walls and four gate towers, you'll fi…
Churches & monasteries
Bad Doberan
Doberan Minster (Doberaner Münster) in Bad Doberan is one of the finest brick Gothic churches in northern Germany and one of the most important surviving monuments of the Cistercians in Mecklenburg. The vast former abbey church, with its s…
Museums
Berchtesgaden
The Obersalzberg Documentation Centre is a place of learning and remembrance at a perpetrators' site: here above Berchtesgaden, from the 1930s, lay the restricted "Führer zone" with Hitler's Berghof and the houses of other Nazi leaders. Th…
Museums
Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler
In an emergency, the West German chancellor, the federal president and around 3,000 people would have sat out a nuclear war here for 30 days behind sealed steel gates. The Government Bunker in the Ahr valley was one of the best-kept secret…
Historic sites & memorials
Nürnberg
The Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg (Dokuzentrum) is one of Germany's most important places to learn about the Nazi era. It occupies the north wing of the Congress Hall, a vast, never-finished Nazi building, and…
Churches & monasteries
St. Blasien
Coming over the hills from Bernau or Todtmoos into St. Blasien, you do not expect this sight: in a narrow Black Forest valley rises a green dome that looks more like Rome than the high Black Forest. St. Blasien Cathedral, locally called th…
Churches & monasteries
Halberstadt
Few churches in Germany follow the model of the great French cathedrals as consistently as the Cathedral of St. Stephen and St. Sixtus in Halberstadt. It took almost 250 years to build, and because the chapter gave very little away, an eno…
Museums
Dortmund
Arrive in Dortmund by train and you see it straight away: a dark brick tower topped by a giant glowing golden U, with huge moving video images below it. The Dortmunder U was once the fermenting and storage building of the Union brewery; to…
Viewpoints
Königswinter
The Drachenfels ("Dragon's Rock") near Königswinter is the most famous hill in the Siebengebirge range and one of the classic viewpoints on the Rhine. Its summit, about 321 m (1,053 ft) high, is crowned by the ruins of a medieval castle, w…
Nature
Eisenach
At its narrowest point, only 68 centimetres separate the rock walls. Walking through the Drachenschlucht (Dragon Gorge) on the southern edge of Eisenach, you follow metal gratings above a rushing stream, with mossy cliffs rising high on bo…
Churches & monasteries
Waldsassen
Holy Trinity Church at Kappl stands at 599 m in a hollow between the Glasberg and Dietzenberg hills near Waldsassen and is one of the most unusual church buildings in Germany. The architect Georg Dientzenhofer translated the Holy Trinity i…
Nature parks
Dresden
The Dresdner Heide (Dresden Heath) is the large forest northeast of central Dresden: roughly 50 square kilometers of pine and mixed woodland with streams, meadows and a dense network of hiking trails. Despite its English nickname it is a f…
Lakes
Edertal
Lake Edersee in northern Hesse is one of Germany's largest reservoirs, winding for almost 18 miles (28.5 km) through the wooded hills of the Kellerwald-Edersee National Park. Its massive stone dam at Hemfurth became world famous in May 194…