Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Churches & monasteries
Lübeck
St. Mary's Church in Lübeck (St. Marien zu Lübeck) is the great merchants' church of the Hanseatic League and the model for around 70 churches across the Baltic region. Its nave has the highest brick vault in the world, and its twin spires…
Churches & monasteries
Bremen
St. Peter's Cathedral in Bremen (St. Petri Dom) is the twin-spired church that towers over the city's Market Square, right beside the UNESCO-listed Town Hall. Its roots go back to the 8th century, and today the Lutheran cathedral combines…
Churches & monasteries
Münster
St. Paul's Cathedral in Münster (St.-Paulus-Dom) is the seat of the Diocese of Münster and, together with the historic town hall, the defining landmark of this university city in Westphalia. Its twin Romanesque towers, Gothic interior and…
Museums
Berlin
The Stasi Museum in Berlin's Lichtenberg district occupies Building 1 of the former headquarters of East Germany's Ministry for State Security. From here Erich Mielke ran the secret police for more than three decades. Today you can walk th…
Churches & monasteries
Waldsassen
The Waldsassen Basilica (Stiftsbasilika Waldsassen) is a lavish Baroque church in the small town of Waldsassen in northeastern Bavaria, just a few miles from the Czech border. Built for a powerful Cistercian monastery, it surprises visitor…
Churches & monasteries
Quedlinburg
St. Servatius Collegiate Church in Quedlinburg sits on a castle hill above one of Germany's best-preserved medieval towns and is among the country's finest Romanesque churches. King Henry I and his wife Mathilde are buried in its crypt, an…
Viewpoints
Stuttgart
The Stuttgart TV Tower (Fernsehturm Stuttgart) is a city landmark and a milestone in engineering history: completed in 1956, it was the world's first TV tower built of reinforced concrete with an observation pod, and it became the model fo…
Museums
Speyer
Technik Museum Speyer is one of Germany's best places to get up close to giant aircraft and spacecraft. On the site of a historic airfield in the cathedral city of Speyer, you can walk through a Lufthansa Boeing 747, step out onto its wing…
Museums
Mannheim
The Technoseum in Mannheim is Baden-Württemberg's state museum of technology and work, and one of Germany's major science and technology museums. Spread over six levels, it tells the story of industrialization and everyday technology throu…
Historic sites & memorials
Berlin
Teufelsberg in Berlin is one of the capital's most unusual attractions: a hill built from World War II rubble, topped by a former Cold War listening station with huge white radar domes, Europe's largest street art gallery and a panoramic v…
Caves
Pottenstein
The Devil's Cave (Teufelshöhle) near Pottenstein is the largest of roughly 1,000 caves in Franconian Switzerland, a craggy hill region in northern Bavaria about an hour's drive from Nuremberg. A guided tour leads through lofty halls filled…
Churches & monasteries
München
The Theatinerkirche, or Theatine Church of St. Cajetan, on Odeonsplatz in Munich is Bavaria's first Baroque church and one of the best-known landmarks of the old town. Its yellow facade, huge dome and twin towers define the city skyline. A…
Theme parks
Erding
Therme Erding, just northeast of Munich, is widely described as the largest thermal spa in the world – a vast indoor and outdoor complex of thermal pools, a wave pool, water slides and saunas. Only about 9 miles (14 km) from Munich Airport…
Museums
Berlin
The Tränenpalast ("Palace of Tears") next to Friedrichstraße station in central Berlin was the departure hall of East Berlin's busiest border crossing during the Cold War. East Germans said goodbye here to relatives from the West, never su…
Museums
Bremen
The Universum Bremen is a hands-on science center in northern Bremen where visitors of all ages learn by touching, testing and experimenting. Its striking stainless-steel building, often compared to a whale or a giant mussel, sits beside a…
Museums
Dresden
The Dresden Transport Museum (Verkehrsmuseum Dresden) sits in the historic Johanneum on Neumarkt square, a few steps from the Frauenkirche. Across roughly 5,000 square meters it tells the story of road, rail, water and air travel, from an…
Castles
Coburg
Veste Coburg is a vast medieval fortress perched about 160 meters above the town of Coburg in northern Bavaria, close to the border with Thuringia. Often called the "Crown of Franconia," it is one of the largest and best-preserved castle c…
Industrial heritage
Kochel am See
The Walchensee Hydroelectric Power Station in Kochel am See is one of Germany's great industrial landmarks and still produces electricity a century after it opened. Six enormous steel pipes carry water from Lake Walchensee down roughly 200…
Monuments
Donaustauf
The Walhalla near Donaustauf, just east of Regensburg, is a hall of fame built in the form of a Greek temple, high above the Danube River. King Ludwig I of Bavaria created it to honor great figures of the German-speaking world, and today m…
Churches & monasteries
Bad Schussenried
The pilgrimage church of Steinhausen near Bad Schussenried in Upper Swabia is often called the most beautiful village church in the world. Between 1728 and 1733 the architect Dominikus Zimmermann created an oval interior that his brother J…
Castles
Büren
Wewelsburg is a triangular Weser Renaissance castle near Paderborn in North Rhine-Westphalia, and a place with a difficult history. Built as a residence of the prince-bishops of Paderborn, it was chosen by Heinrich Himmler as an ideologica…
Castles
Eichstätt
Willibaldsburg Castle towers over the town of Eichstätt and the Altmühl Valley in Upper Bavaria, roughly halfway between Munich and Nuremberg. For centuries it was the seat of the prince-bishops of Eichstätt. Today it houses the Jura Museu…
Other
Hayingen
The Wimsener Höhle (Wimsen Cave) near Hayingen in the Swabian Jura is the only cave in Germany you can explore by boat. A boatman guides a small punt across crystal-clear, turquoise water into the mountain while explaining how the cave for…
Churches & monasteries
Worms
Worms Cathedral (Wormser Dom St. Peter) is the landmark of Worms, one of Germany's oldest cities, on the Rhine River in Rhineland-Palatinate. The smallest and most slender of the three Romanesque imperial cathedrals of the Rhineland, it ri…