Discover places worth seeing — from historic sites to mountain trails.
Museums
Lübeck
The European Hansemuseum in Lübeck is considered the world's largest museum devoted to the Hanseatic League, the medieval trading network that once dominated northern Europe. Set at the northern tip of Lübeck's UNESCO-listed old town, it t…
Palaces
Eutin
Eutin Castle (Eutiner Schloss) is a four-winged brick palace on a moated island in the Großer Eutiner See in Schleswig-Holstein, in the region known as Holstein Switzerland. Once a residence of the prince-bishops of Lübeck and later a summ…
Fortresses
Koblenz
Ehrenbreitstein Fortress towers above the Rhine in Koblenz and is one of the largest surviving fortresses in Europe. From its walls you look straight down on the Deutsches Eck, where the Moselle meets the Rhine, and far across the hills of…
Fortresses
Würzburg
Marienberg Fortress in Würzburg crowns a hill about 100 m above the Main River and is the city's most famous landmark. For nearly five centuries it was the seat of Würzburg's prince-bishops, before they moved into the grand Residence in to…
Gardens & parks
Köln
Flora and the Botanical Garden in Cologne's Riehl district make up one of the city's loveliest free green spaces: a historic park with a grand festival hall, flower parterres and greenhouses, right beside Cologne Zoo. If you want a calm wa…
Museums
Bad Windsheim
The Franconian Open-Air Museum in Bad Windsheim (Fränkisches Freilandmuseum) is the largest open-air museum in Bavaria and shows how people in Franconia once lived and worked. Across 45 hectares, more than 120 historic buildings from all o…
Churches & monasteries
Freiburg im Breisgau
Freiburg Minster (Freiburger Münster) is the landmark of Freiburg im Breisgau and one of the finest Gothic churches in Germany. Built of red sandstone on the edge of the Black Forest, it is crowned by an openwork spire that the Swiss histo…
Museums
Neu-Anspach
Hessenpark in Neu-Anspach is the open-air museum of the German state of Hesse and one of the top family day trips from Frankfurt. Spread across about 65 hectares (160 acres) in the Taunus hills, it brings together more than a hundred histo…
Museums
Kassel
The Fridericianum in Kassel is one of the first public museums in continental Europe and the historic home of documenta, the world-famous exhibition of contemporary art. Behind its columned Neoclassical facade on Friedrichsplatz, the build…
Landmarks
Baden-Baden
The Friedrichsbad in Baden-Baden is a grand 19th-century bathhouse and one of the most beautiful historic thermal baths in Europe. Behind its Renaissance Revival facade in the old spa quarter, you follow a fixed ritual – the Roman-Irish ba…
Churches & monasteries
Fulda
Fulda Cathedral (Fuldaer Dom) is a baroque cathedral in the center of Fulda in Hesse, and the burial place of Saint Boniface, the "Apostle of the Germans". With its two tall west towers, white stucco interior and the crypt where pilgrims h…
Industrial heritage
Oberhausen
The Gasometer Oberhausen is a former gas holder turned into Europe's tallest exhibition hall, and one of the top things to do in Germany's Ruhr region. Standing 383 feet (117.5 m) high beside the Rhine-Herne Canal, it hosts large-scale nat…
Historic sites & memorials
Lohheide
The Bergen-Belsen Memorial in Lohheide, Lower Saxony, marks the site of a prisoner-of-war camp, a Nazi concentration camp and a postwar camp for displaced persons. It is known around the world as the place where Anne Frank and her sister M…
Historic sites & memorials
Berlin
The Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial is the former central remand prison of the Stasi, East Germany's secret police. Political prisoners were interrogated and psychologically broken here, in a restricted zone that did not appear on East Be…
Historic sites & memorials
Rasdorf
Point Alpha on the former border between Hesse and Thuringia is one of the best places in Germany to grasp what the Cold War looked like on the ground. A US Army observation post and the East German border fortifications face each other ac…
Historic sites & memorials
Oranienburg
The Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp Memorial in Oranienburg, about 35 km north of central Berlin, preserves the site of one of the major Nazi concentration camps and of the Soviet special camp that followed it. It is one of the most visit…
Museums
Nürnberg
The Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg is the largest museum of cultural history in the German-speaking world and one of the top things to do in Nuremberg. Spread across a medieval Carthusian monastery and striking modern wings, it t…
Landmarks
Leipzig
The Gewandhaus in Leipzig is the city's great concert hall on Augustusplatz and home of the Gewandhaus Orchestra, one of the oldest and most celebrated orchestras in the world. The striking 1981 building, with its huge glass front and the…
Museums
Weimar
Goethe's House in Weimar (Goethes Wohnhaus) is Germany's most famous writer's home. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the towering figure of German literature, lived here on the Frauenplan square for most of five decades, worked on "Faust" in it…
Palaces
Leipzig
Gohlis Palace (Gohliser Schlösschen) in the Leipzig district of Gohlis is a small Baroque summer palace from the 1750s. It is described as the last surviving Baroque palace and estate complex around Leipzig. If you are looking for things t…
Historic sites & memorials
Messel
The Messel Pit (Grube Messel) near Darmstadt is Germany's oldest UNESCO natural World Heritage Site and one of the richest fossil sites on Earth. A former oil-shale mine, it preserves animals and plants from the Eocene, including early hor…
Industrial heritage
Sankt Andreasberg
The Samson Mine (Grube Samson) in Sankt Andreasberg is a visitor mine in the Upper Harz mountains of Lower Saxony and home to what is described as the last working man-engine in the world. The former silver mine is part of the UNESCO World…
Museums
Mainz
The Gutenberg Museum in Mainz is one of the oldest printing museums in the world, dedicated to Johannes Gutenberg, the Mainz-born inventor of printing with movable metal type. While a new museum is being built on its historic site, the col…
Historic sites & memorials
Busdorf
Hedeby (Haithabu in German), near Schleswig in northern Germany, was one of the great trading towns of the Viking Age and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. On the shore of the Haddeby Noor, a quiet inlet of the Schlei, merchants from ac…