Kaiserslautern

Kaiserslautern carries an emperor in its name and a football miracle in its heart. Frederick Barbarossa raised an imperial palace here in the twelfth century — the red sandstone remnants and the Kaiserbrunnen fountain keep his memory, and the locals call their city "K-Town" or, fondly, "Barbarossastadt". But the true civic religion resides on the Betzenberg: from this modest Palatinate city came Fritz Walter and the core of the team that won the 1954 World Cup — the "Miracle of Bern" — and the stadium bearing Walter's name remains one of German football's loudest, most storied grounds.

The city earns its living cleverly — a technical university, software and research institutes clustered in a science park — and hosts the largest American military community outside the United States, which gives the Palatinate streets an easy transatlantic accent. Culture holds its own: the Pfalztheater stages opera, ballet and drama for the whole region in its modern house, the Fruchthalle — a Florentine-style festival hall of the 1840s — is the concert address, and the Kammgarn, a former spinning mill, runs jazz and rock year-round.

Green is the city's other element: the Japanese Garden, among the largest in Germany, terraces a valley in the centre, the Gartenschau park adds Europe's largest dinosaur exhibition to its flowerbeds, and all around rises the Palatinate Forest, Germany's largest continuous woodland — an emperor's hunting ground now laced with trails.