Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Palaces
Wolfsburg
Wolfsburg Castle (Schloss Wolfsburg) is the historic heart of Wolfsburg, the Lower Saxony city best known as the home of Volkswagen. The castle is more than 600 years older than the city, which actually took its name from it. A medieval mo…
Palaces
Oberschleißheim
Schleißheim Palace in Oberschleißheim, just north of Munich, is a complex of three Baroque palaces set in a vast French-style garden. The New Palace, with a facade more than 300 meters long, is the centerpiece, flanked by the Old Palace an…
Caves
Homburg
Yellow, ochre, rust-red: in the Schlossberg Caves in Homburg, coloured bands swirl across walls and ceilings as if someone had pasted marbled paper inside the hill. Yet water did not shape these passages and halls, people did. Over centuri…
Churches & monasteries
Lutherstadt Wittenberg
The Castle Church in Wittenberg (Schlosskirche) is where, according to tradition, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on October 31, 1517, sparking the Protestant Reformation. Part of the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Luther Memorials,…
Old towns & squares
Stuttgart
Schlossplatz in Stuttgart (Palace Square) is the city's grand central square and the best place to start exploring the capital of Baden-Württemberg. Framed by the baroque New Palace, the colonnaded Königsbau, the Old Castle and the glass c…
Lakes
Schluchsee
Lake Schluchsee in the southern Black Forest is the largest lake in the Black Forest and the second-largest body of water in the state of Baden-Württemberg after Lake Constance. Set at about 3,050 feet (930 m) between the Feldberg and the…
Old towns & squares
Bremen
The Schnoor in Bremen is the oldest surviving residential quarter of this Hanseatic city, a tangle of cobbled lanes and tiny gabled houses squeezed between the cathedral and the Weser River. It is one of the top things to do in Bremen and…
Churches & monasteries
Regensburg
Stone beasts, human figures and, among them, twelve characters no one wanted in heaven: the Scots Portal of St James's Church on the western edge of Regensburg's old town has puzzled visitors for more than 800 years. It is considered one o…
Mountains & peaks
Bad Schandau
The Schrammsteine look as if someone had set a sandstone wall into the landscape and then hacked at it with an axe. This long, deeply fissured ridge east of Bad Schandau has around 80 summits, broken by three massive gaps known as the Schr…
Nature
Fladungen
A wooden boardwalk leads through a landscape that looks more like Lapland than Franconia: small pines and gnarled birches, red peat mosses, dark pools and cotton grass. The Black Moor in the Bavarian Rhön, near the point where Bavaria, Hes…
Museums
Gutach (Schwarzwaldbahn)
The Black Forest Open Air Museum Vogtsbauernhof in Gutach is the best-known open-air museum in the Black Forest and one of the most rewarding things to do in this part of southwest Germany. Historic farmhouses, mills and workshops were mov…
Landmarks
Heringsdorf
Ahlbeck Pier (Seebrücke Ahlbeck) on the Baltic island of Usedom is the landmark of the historic resort of Ahlbeck and one of the island's most photographed sights. A white pier house with a red roof and four green turrets sits on a platfor…
Coast & islands
Heringsdorf
The Heringsdorf Pier on the island of Usedom is one of the longest piers in Germany, stretching 508 meters into the Baltic Sea. It is the landmark of the "Imperial Spas," the elegant 19th-century seaside resorts of Ahlbeck, Heringsdorf and…
Coast & islands
Sellin
Sellin Pier (Seebrücke Sellin) in the seaside resort of Sellin on Rügen is one of the most photographed sights on Germany's Baltic coast. A white, turreted pier house in classic resort architecture sits on stilts above the sea, connected t…
Zoos
Hodenhagen
The Serengeti Park in Hodenhagen is a combined safari park, zoo and amusement park in Lower Saxony, and at 220 hectares (540 acres) it bills itself as Europe's largest safari park. Around 2,000 animals live here alongside more than 100 att…
Other
Dortmund
From many points across the city you can see the bright yellow steel pylons rising high above the stadium roof. Signal Iduna Park, still the Westfalenstadion to many fans, is Germany's largest football stadium with 81,365 places. Its most…
Viewpoints
Willingen (Upland)
665 metres of steel grating, a railing on each side and up to 100 metres of air below you: the Skywalk Willingen in the Upland, the Hessian part of the Sauerland hills, is the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in Germany. It spans from…
Other
Ahorntal
The Sophienhöhle (Sophie Cave) near Ahorntal is one of the most beautiful show caves in Franconian Switzerland, a limestone landscape in northern Bavaria between Nuremberg and Bayreuth. It sits on the slope of the Ailsbach valley next to B…
Monuments
Berlin
At the end of a long axis, a bronze soldier stands on an artificial burial mound. He carries a child on his left arm and with the lowered sword in his right hand shatters a swastika. The Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park is both monume…
Castles
Bielefeld
You can see it from the centre of Bielefeld: the round tower of Sparrenburg Castle, standing some 60 metres above the old town on the Sparrenberg in the Teutoburg Forest. The Counts of Ravensberg built a castle here before 1250, and in the…
Theme parks
Berlin
A Ferris wheel creaking in the wind for years, toppled dinosaurs in the grass, an overgrown roller coaster: for more than two decades the Spreepark in Plänterwald was one of Germany's best-known abandoned places. Before that, as the Kultur…
Churches & monasteries
Annaberg-Buchholz
When rich silver veins were found in the Ore Mountains in the late 15th century, Duke George the Bearded founded a new mining town and had a church built that was meant to tower over everything. At 65 metres long and 40 metres wide, St. An…
Churches & monasteries
Nürnberg
St. Lorenz in Nuremberg (St. Lawrence's Church) is the great Gothic church of the southern Old Town and one of the finest medieval churches in southern Germany. Its twin towers and huge rose window dominate the pedestrian zone, and inside…
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…