Germersheim

Germersheim is a fortress that learned languages. The Bavarian kings ringed the Rhine town in the 1830s with one of the mightiest fortification systems of the age — Weißenburger Tor and Ludwigstor, casemates, bastions and glacis in noble sandstone — a fortress never tested in battle and therefore magnificently preserved; its vaults now house museums, cellars and festivals, and the biennial Festungsfest fills the ramparts with costumed garrisons. Within the walls, the arsenal quarter's dignified severity gives the little town an unexpected grandeur.

Its history bears an imperial deathbed: Rudolf of Habsburg, first of his dynasty on the German throne, died in Germersheim in 1291 while riding to Speyer to lie among the emperors — the town keeps his memory with a monument and its oldest quarter's pride.

The modern garrison is academic: since 1947 Germersheim has housed what became the University of Mainz's Faculty of Translation, one of the largest and most renowned schools of translating and interpreting in the world — thousands of students from every continent conjugating in the casemate town's cafés, giving the Rhine fortress a permanent Babel of a friendly kind. Around the walls, the Rhine auen spread their willow wilderness, ferries and cycle paths follow the stream, and asparagus and tobacco country begins at the glacis. Built against invasion, occupied by interpreters: Germersheim's garrisons improved with time.