Höxter

Höxter keeps one of the oldest doorways in the Western world. A few minutes from its Weser Renaissance gables stands Corvey, the imperial abbey founded in 822, whose Carolingian Westwork — the towering ninth-century entrance structure, unique in survival — earned UNESCO World Heritage listing in 2014. Inside, faded wall paintings of Odysseus and the sirens decorate a Frankish imperial church: classical monsters in a Christian abbey, painted while the Vikings were still raiding. Corvey was one of medieval Germany's great centres of learning, its library famous across the Empire.

The abbey's most touching guardian came late: August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, poet of the Deutschlandlied, spent his last years as Corvey's librarian and lies buried beside the church — the author of the national anthem keeping eternal company with the manuscripts. The Baroque abbey buildings around the Westwork now house museum rooms and a summer music festival in the Kaisersaal and abbey church.

Höxter itself, the abbey's town on the Weser, prospered in the Hanse and wears the proceeds well: the Dechanei and town hall with their carved fans and rosettes are showpieces of the Weser Renaissance, half-timbered lanes converge on St Kilian's, and the 2023 state garden show regreened the riverbanks between town and abbey. The Weser cycle path delivers a steady pilgrimage of the unhurried — the correct pace, in a place twelve centuries deep.