Heilbronn

Heilbronn is Swabia's wine capital with a literary sweetheart. Kleist named his most romantic heroine Käthchen von Heilbronn, and the town returned the compliment: the gabled Käthchenhaus on the market square claims her, a Käthchen is elected to preside over civic festivities, and the great autumn wine village around the Rathaus — with its astronomical clock of 1580 — pours the local Trollinger and Riesling from one of Germany's largest wine-growing communes, vineyards climbing the Wartberg within sight of the centre.

The tower of the Kilianskirche is the town's stone signature: raised by Hans Schweiner from 1513, it counts among the first major Renaissance works north of the Alps, crowned not by a saint but by a swaggering Landsknecht. That it stands at all is the sober part of the story — on 4 December 1944 a firestorm destroyed the old town and killed thousands; Heilbronn rebuilt itself as a working city on the Neckar and has lately rebuilt its confidence too.

The new century shows: the 2019 Federal Garden Show turned harbour wasteland into the Neckarbogen quarter, and the Experimenta — Germany's largest science centre, a spiralling glass sculpture on an island in the river — draws families from across the southwest. The Harmonie concert hall keeps the musical season, the Theaterschiff floats drama on the Neckar, and the vineyards keep their ancient counsel above it all.