Füssen

Füssen stands at the end of the Romantic Road and the beginning of the postcard: the towers of Neuschwanstein — King Ludwig II's opera-set castle, Wagner's worlds built in limestone — and yellow Hohenschwangau rise minutes away, drawing millions along the Alpine foothills. But the little town at their feet holds a quieter European first of its own: Füssen is the cradle of commercial lute-making. Its craftsmen, drawing on Alpine spruce and yew, founded Europe's earliest lute-makers' guild in 1562, and Füssen masters carried the craft to Venice, Vienna and Rome, seeding the workshops of the baroque; the Museum of the City, housed in the magnificent baroque abbey of St Mang, displays the lutes and violins beside one of Germany's finest historical instrument collections.

The abbey's foundations reach to the eighth century and the grave of St Magnus, apostle of the Allgäu; above it, the High Palace of the Augsburg prince-bishops wears illusionistic painted façades — Gothic trompe-l'oeil at its boldest. In St Anna's chapel, the macabre and moving Füssen Dance of Death of 1602 reminds visitors that even here, the mountains outlast all.

The Lech tumbles through town over its waterfall, the lakes of Forggensee and Alpsee mirror the castles, and summer festival concerts — including musical stagings of Ludwig's own legend — keep the king's operatic spirit in residence.