Kronach

Kronach gave the German Renaissance its painter. Lucas Cranach the Elder was born here around 1472 and carried his birthplace in his name to the courts of Saxony, where he painted Luther and the Reformation into visual memory; his hometown honours him in the Fränkische Galerie — a branch of the Bavarian National Museum showing Franconian masters, Cranach among them — installed high above the roofs in the town's mightiest possession.

That possession is the Festung Rosenberg, one of Germany's largest fortresses and one of its proudest: in all its history the fortress was never taken, repelling even the Swedes in the Thirty Years' War — a defiance the town restages each year in its historic festival, when the "Schwedenprozession" gives thanks and the whole upper town returns to the seventeenth century. The fortress's walls, casemates and commandant's buildings reward a full afternoon; its courtyard stages open-air opera and theatre in summer, and the view runs deep into the Frankenwald.

Below, the upper town is a remarkably intact composition of sandstone gates, gables and lanes — Kronach escaped wartime destruction — while the annual "Kronach leuchtet" festival turns the historic streets into a gallery of light art, drawing designers and crowds after dark. A painter's name, an unconquered rock, and a small town that illuminates itself: Upper Franconia in concentrated form.