937 Best Sights in Germany

Wimpfen im Tal (Wimpfen in the Valley), the oldest part of town, is home to the Benedictine monastery of Gruessau and its church, Ritterstiftskirche St. Peter, which dates from the 10th and 13th centuries. The cloisters are an example of German Gothic at its most uncluttered.

The forested plateau of the Rochusberg (St. Roch Hill) is the pretty setting of the Rochuskapelle, the most visible Bingen landmark from across the river in Rüdesheim. Originally built in 1666 to celebrate the end of the plague, it has been rebuilt twice. In August 1814, Goethe attended the consecration festivities, the forerunner of today's Rochusfest, a weeklong folk festival in mid-August. The chapel contains an altar dedicated to St. Hildegard of Bingen, with relics and furnishings from the convents she founded in modern-day Bingen and Eibingen. While the chapel is only open for services, it's worth a trip to stroll the leafy chapel gardens, with its shaded outdoor pews, tree-lined trails, and lovely Rhine and vineyard views.

This large square a few blocks north of the Main River, restored after wartime bomb damage with historically accurate 17th- and 18th-century buildings, is the historical focal point of the city. The Römer, the Nikolaikirche, and the half-timber Ostzeile houses are all clustered around this huge plaza. The 16th-century Fountain of Justitia (Justice), which flows with wine on special occasions, stands in the center of the Römerberg. The square is also the site of many public festivals throughout the year, including the Christmas market in December. Surrounding streets are lined with restaurants, cafés, snack shops, and souvenir shops.

The remains of a Roman fortress built in AD 120, the Römerkastell-Saalburg could accommodate a cohort (500 men) and was part of the fortifications along the Limes Wall, which ran from the Danube to the Rhine and was meant to protect the Roman Empire from barbarian invasion. It was restored in the early 1900s under the direction of the Kaiser. The site, which includes a museum of Roman artifacts, is 6½ km (4 miles) north of Bad Homburg on Route 456 in the direction of Usingen; there's a direct bus from Bad Homburg. There's also a small café.

While excavating a 17th-century pilgrimage church, archaeologists uncovered a stout Roman fortress with five defence towers and walls more than 12 feet thick. The Roman citadel Boiotro was discovered on a hill known as the Mariahilfberg on the south bank of the river Inn, with its Roman well still plentiful and fresh. Pottery, lead figures, and other artifacts from the area are housed in this museum at the edge of the site.

For a look at 19th- and 20th-century rural life in the Mosel-Saar area, visit this hilltop Freilichtmuseum (open-air museum) near Konz-Saar, 10 km (6 miles) southwest of Trier. Numerous farmhouses and typical village buildings in the region were saved from the wrecking ball by being dismantled and brought to the Roscheider Hof, where they were rebuilt and refurnished as they appeared decades ago. Old schoolrooms, a barbershop and beauty salon, a tavern, a shoemaker's workshop, a pharmacy, a grocery, and a dentist's office have been set up in the rooms of the museum proper, along with period rooms and exhibitions on local trades and household work, such as the history of laundry. In addition to a large collection of tin figures, there's also a Biedermeier rose garden, a museum shop, and a restaurant with a beer garden on the grounds.

Within the medieval guildhall of the city's butchers, this museum has a rich collection of art and artifacts from the Bodensee region. Highlights include exhibits of the life and work of the people around the Bodensee, from the Bronze Age through the Middle Ages and beyond. There's also a collection of sculpture and altar paintings from the Middle Ages.

One of the island's best-known features is this dune cliff on the northern end of the Kampen beaches, which turns an eerie dark red when the sun sets.

Nicknamed the \"Rotes Rathaus\" (Red Town Hall) for its redbrick design, the town hall was completed in 1869. Its most distinguishing features are its neo-Renaissance clock tower and frieze that depicts Berlin's history up to 1879 in 36 terra-cotta plaques, each 20 feet long. Climb the grand stairwell to view the coat-of-arms hall and a few exhibits. The entrance is inside the inner courtyard.

Formerly known as the Reichsstadtmuseum (Imperial Town Museum), it is housed in a former Dominican convent dating back to the 13th century, including a cloister where one of the artifacts is the great tankard, or Pokal, of the Meistertrunk, which legend says saved the town in the Thirty Years' War in the 1600s when the conquering general could not empty it on a bet. The town purchased the property in 1933 and converted it into a museum. Exhibits include hunting weapons used by Marie Antoinette, a hunting rifle belonging to Frederick the Great of Prussia, musical instruments and original Biedermeier room reconstructed from a Rothenburg townhouse from the early 1800s. A large gallery is devoted to Jewish life in Rothenberg and their contributions to the city and region from the 13th century to the Third Reich.

Freyburg is the home of one of Europe's largest producers of sparkling wine, a rare eastern German product with a significant market share in the West. Hour-long tours of the production facility include the world's largest wooden wine barrel.

Part of Bad Reichenhall's revival included building this new spa facility in 2009. Indoor and outdoor pools in the Therme section are fed by the saline deposits beneath the city; families with children will appreciate the salt-free kids' pool and slide. Saunas and steam rooms are rounded off with a host of special applications using salt, essential oils, mud packs, and massages. The Therme can be popular, especially in winter, so online reservations for any spa services are a good idea

The sandstone church is on the corner of Robert Koch Strasse and Lichtentaler Strasse. The Russian diaspora community in Baden-Baden consecrated it in 1882; it's identifiable by its gold onion dome.

For centuries, salt was the basis of Berchtesgaden's wealth. In the 12th century, Emperor Barbarossa gave mining rights to a Benedictine abbey that had been founded here a century earlier. The abbey was secularized early in the 19th century, when it was taken over by Berchtesgaden's princely rulers. Where once only select guests were allowed to see how the source of the city's wealth was extracted from the earth, today an hour-long tour will transport you—via a miniature train—nearly 1 km (½ mile) into the mountain to an enormous chamber where the salt is mined. This is one the region's most popular family attractions, as tours also include rides down the wooden chutes used by miners to get from one level to another, as well as a boat ride on an underground saline lake the size of a football field. Adult visitors may wish to join one of the special four-hour dinners inside the mine; they're very popular so book early.

Around 180 German 19th-century paintings from the Romantic era up to the periods of realism and symbolism make up the collections of the Sammlung Schack, originally the private collection of Count Adolf Friedrich von Schack.

This small fishing town is the island's harbor for ferries to Sweden. Sassnitz is surrounded by some of the most pristine nature to be found along the Baltic Coast. Ten kilometers (6 miles) north of Sassnitz are the twin chalk cliffs of Rügen's main attraction, the Stubbenkammer headland. From here you can best see the much-photographed white-chalk cliffs called the Königstuhl, rising 350 feet from the sea. A steep trail leads down to a beach.

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This elegant 18th-century city palace was built by the von Liebenhofens, a family of wealthy bankers. Schaezler was the name of a baron who married into the family. Today the palace rooms contain the Deutsche Barockgalerie (German Baroque Gallery), a major art collection that features works of the 17th and 18th centuries. The palace adjoins the former church of a Dominican monastery. A steel door behind the banquet hall leads into another world of high-vaulted ceilings, where the Staatsgalerie Altdeutsche Meister, a Bavarian state collection, highlights old-master paintings, among them a Dürer portrait of one of the Fuggers. 

Germany's largest ice caves lie 10 km (6 miles) north of Berchtesgaden. Drive to Parkplatz Eishöhle, just north of Marktschellenberg village on the B305 (10 minutes), or take bus 840 from Berchtesgaden train station to the Eishöhle stop at the same location (15 minutes). From there, you can reach the caves on foot by walking 3½ hours along the clearly-marked route. Once there, a guided tour of the caves takes about 45 minutes; bring warm clothes, even at the height of summer. A small restaurant and bunkhouse, Toni Lenz Hütte, is close to the caves and open daily during the season.

Housed in a listed hall of the old fish market, this museum pays tribute to Kiel's impressive maritime history as a port city, as a naval and shipyard location, and as a place of sailing sports. 

This green-shuttered residence, part of the Goethe Nationalmuseum, is on a tree-shaded square not far from Goethe's house. Schiller and his family spent a happy, all-too-brief three years here (he died here in 1805). Schiller's study is tucked underneath the mansard roof, a cozy room dominated by his desk, where he probably completed Wilhelm Tell. Much of the remaining furniture and the collection of books were added later, although they all date from around Schiller's time.

This walkway starts just above the Alte Brücke opposite the Old Town and cuts steeply through terraced vineyards until it reaches the woods, where it crosses the Philosophenweg (Philosophers' Path).

The last royal resident of the Berchtesgaden abbey, Crown Prince Rupprecht (who died here in 1955), furnished this place with rare family treasures that now form the basis of this permanent collection. Fine Renaissance rooms exhibit the prince's sacred art, which is particularly rich in wood sculptures by such great late-Gothic artists as Tilman Riemenschneider and Veit Stoss. There are two weaponry rooms exhibiting hunting tools, including rifles from the 19th century, and a beautiful rose garden out back. You can also visit the abbey's original, cavernous, 13th-century dormitory and cool cloisters. Castle visits are only possible on an hour-long guided tour, which takes in 30 of the total 214 rooms; these are held four times a day (except Saturday) between mid-May and mid-October, but only once or twice a day (and only midweek) during low season. Check online in advance for unscheduled closures, as the Wittelsbach heir still occasionally stops by for a visit.

Perched on a hill 5 km (3 miles) northwest of Coburg, this was, until 1231, the main castle of the Knights of Callenberg. In the 16th century it was taken over by the Dukes of Coburg and from 1842 it served as the summer residence of the hereditary Coburg prince and later Duke Ernst II. It holds a number of important collections, including the Herzoglicher Kunstbesitz (the Ducal Art Collection, complete with portraits of the Dukes of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and precious baroque, Empire, and Biedermeier furniture) and the Schützenmuseum (the museum of the German Rifle Association, featuring antiques from the history of shooting—but very little information in English). There are three ways to reach the castle from Coburg: by car (10 minutes), by bus (5 minutes to Beirsdorf, then a 25-minute walk), or by foot (55 minutes).

Vines, flowers, and fig trees cloak the houses behind St. Ulrich on Heumarktstrasse and its extension, Deichelgasse (nicknamed Feigengasse because of its Feigenbäume—fig trees). To see the workshops and ateliers of local artists, sculptors, and goldsmiths ask for a list at the local tourist office ( www.deidesheim.de/galerien-kuenstler.html). Cross the Wine Road to reach the grounds of Schloss Deidesheim, now a pub-restaurant. The bishops of Speyer built a moated castle on the site in the 13th century. Twice destroyed and rebuilt, the present castle dates from 1817, and the moats have been converted into gardens.

Prince Albert spent much of his childhood in this ducal palace in the heart of Coburg. Built in the mid-16th century, it has been greatly altered over the years, principally following a fire in the early 19th century. Duke Ernst I invited Karl Friedrich Schinkel from Berlin to redo the palace in the then-popular neo-Gothic style. Some of the original Renaissance features were kept. The rooms of the castle are quite special, especially those upstairs, where the ceilings are heavily decorated with stucco and the floors have wonderful patterns of various woods. The Hall of Giants is named for the larger-than-life caryatids that support the ceiling; the favorite sight downstairs is Queen Victoria's flush toilet, which was the first one installed in Germany. Here, too, the ceiling is worth noting for its playful, gentle stuccowork.

Formerly a Benedictine monastery, this is the ancestral home of the princely Thurn und Taxis family, which made its fortune after being granted the right to carry official and private mail throughout the empire ruled by Emperor Maximilian I (1493–1519) and by Philip I, King of Spain. Their horn still symbolizes the post office in several European countries.

A guided tour (English audio guide available) of the State Rooms includes the splendid ballroom and throne room, allowing you to witness the setting of courtly life in the 19th century, as well as visit to the fine Kreuzgang (cloister) of the former abbey. Without a tour, but for a small fee, you can visit the Princely Treasury, home to carefully selected items displaying fine craftsmanship—be it dueling pistols, a plain marshal's staff, a boudoir, or a snuffbox—and the Carriage Museum, home to the family's coaches, carriages, and related items. Also on the grounds is the Basilika St. Emmeram (the family church), with foundations dating to the 7th and 8th centuries and a richly decorated 18th-century baroque interior. The church also contains the graves of the 7th-century martyred Regensburg bishop Emmeram and the 10th-century saint Wolfgang.

Five kilometers (3 miles) south of Rastatt, in Förch, Ludwig the Turk's Bohemian-born wife, Sibylle Augusta, constructed her own charming little summer palace after his death. Inside, in an exotic, imaginative baroque interior of mirrors, tiles, and marble, her collection of miniatures, mosaics, and porcelain is strikingly displayed. One of the only original palaces left unscathed by the war, the opulent interior includes a one-of-a-kind, 18th-century Florentine cabinet with 758 colorful panels. Note that the palace can only be visited inside with a 50-minute guided tour held every hour, usually only in German, though English information sheets are available.