Ebern

Ebern is the walled key to Franconia's castle country. The little town in the Baunach valley keeps its medieval defences with unusual completeness: a ring of wall and a parade of towers — the tall Grauturm, the town's grey landmark, chief among them — enclosing a marketplace of Franconian gables around the Gothic parish church of St Laurentius, whose stone treasures include work of the Riemenschneider school. Gates, watch-walks and the moat's green trace make the circuit a pleasant half-hour of the fifteenth century.

The countryside explains the fortifications: the Haßberge around Ebern are Germany's densest neighbourhood of castles and ruins — the "Burgenwinkel", the castle corner, where knightly seats, robber ruins and hilltop shells stand within walking net of each other, now threaded by the Burgenkundlicher Lehrpfad and celebrated in an interpretive centre. Grandest of the living houses is Schloss Eyrichshof at the town's edge: the Rotenhan family's Renaissance-rooted palace, its park and courtyard hosting concerts and open-air summer events that give Ebern a cultural season beyond its size.

The working town supplies the region — schools, a storied automotive supplier, market days — while the Baunach winds toward the Main and the sandstone hills keep their oak woods and wine slopes. Walls in good order, castles in all directions, music in a palace yard: Ebern holds Franconia's quieter riches in trust.