Germany

Berlin is Europe's capital of reinvention — a city shaped by its turbulent history and defined by its creative present. The Wall may be gone but its legacy is everywhere, from the East Side Gallery to the vibrant neighborhoods that grew up in its shadow. Cheap by Western European standards, with legendary nightlife and a thriving art scene.

Bavaria's capital — Oktoberfest, beer gardens, twin-towered Frauenkirche, and the starting line for the German Alps. Marienplatz's Glockenspiel rings at 11am, surfers ride a standing wave on the Eisbach in Englischer Garten, and Salzburg is 90 minutes east by train. BMW, Nymphenburg, Dachau Memorial, and 400 Bavarian breweries round out longer visits.

Germany's second-largest city and largest port — a Hanseatic League trading capital that has more bridges than Venice, Amsterdam, and London combined, with Europe's largest contiguous warehouse complex (the UNESCO Speicherstadt) and the wave-roofed €866M Elbphilharmonie concert hall on top of an old harbour warehouse. The Reeperbahn in St. Pauli is Europe's most famous red-light district where The Beatles played 281 nights 1960–1962, the Sunday Fischmarkt has been operating for 320 years (05:00–09:30, with a live band), and the Inner and Outer Alster lakes give central Hamburg a sailing-club energy unique among major European cities.

Germany's fourth-largest city wraps around a 157-metre Gothic cathedral that took 632 years to finish and now anchors a UNESCO-listed Altstadt. Cross the Hohenzollernbrücke past its 500,000 love locks, drink Kölsch from skinny 200ml glasses in Brauhauses where moustachioed Köbes waiters keep refilling until you cap the glass with a beer mat, and time your visit for Karneval in February when the Rhineland's defining party shuts the city for a week. Roman Cologne, medieval Cologne, post-war reconstruction Cologne — all packed into 1,800 walkable years.

Saxony's Baroque jewel rebuilt itself from rubble — the February 1945 firebombing flattened the Altstadt and the Frauenkirche stood as a black mound for 49 years until reunification funded an 11-year, $200 million reconstruction completed in 2005. Today the sandstone dome glows again over the Neumarkt, the Zwinger's pavilions enclose orange trees behind sgraffito walls, and the Semperoper stages opera in the same hall Wagner once conducted. Cross the Augustus Bridge into Neustadt for tattoo parlours and craft beer bars that lean hard into the city's eastern, post-Wende identity.

Germany's only true skyline city — home to the European Central Bank and a financial district nicknamed Mainhattan that puts a dozen 200-metre-plus towers along the Main River. The flip side sits across the river in Sachsenhausen, where Apfelwein taverns serve cloudy fermented apple wine in ribbed Geripptes glasses with handkerchief-pattern Bembel jugs. Römerberg square holds the half-timbered city hall, the Goethe House recreates the writer's birthplace room by room, and FRA airport pushes 65 million passengers a year through Europe's third-busiest hub — most travellers' first or last German city.

Germany's most romantic university town — the half-ruined red-sandstone Schloss looking down on the Neckar River, the cobbled Hauptstrasse threading through a pristine Old Town that was spared Allied bombing, and Ruperto Carola, the country's oldest university (1386). The Karl-Theodor-Brücke arches across to the Philosophenweg, where Hegel and Goethe both walked. Day-trippers from Frankfurt outnumber overnight stays, but the early-morning and late-evening hours when the tour buses leave are when Heidelberg becomes itself.

A 160 km north-south range of densely-forested hills along Germany's southwest border with France — cuckoo-clock workshops in Triberg, the 163m Triberger Wasserfälle (Germany's highest waterfall), the deep-blue Titisee, the 60 km Schwarzwaldhochstrasse scenic drive, and the half-timbered villages of the Gutach Valley. The original Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Black Forest cake) was created here in 1915. Freiburg makes the obvious base — a sunny university town at the southwestern edge with the Münster spire and a tram running into the forest in 20 minutes.

Germany's best-preserved medieval walled town — a 11,000-person Bavarian time capsule sitting on a hilltop above the Tauber River, surrounded by an unbroken 2.5 km circuit of 14th-century ramparts you can walk in their entirety. The Plönlein corner (a half-timbered house wedged between two gate towers) is one of Europe's most-photographed viewpoints. The Käthe Wohlfahrt Christmas Museum runs year-round, the Schneeballen pastries are unique to the town, and the Romantic Road threads through. By night, after the day-trip buses leave for Munich and Nuremberg, the town belongs to a few hundred overnight guests and the Nightwatchman tour.