Landstuhl

Landstuhl buried the last knight and heals the wounded of our own age. On the Nanstein above the town, Franz von Sickingen — condottiere, Reformation patron, "the last knight" — made his stand in 1523: the besieging princes' artillery smashed his modernised castle in days, Sickingen died in its ruins, and historians ever since have dated the end of the free knights' era to this hill. The castle ruin, part-restored with its mighty round battery tower, is the town's crown and summer stage, and Landstuhl styles itself Sickingenstadt with monuments to match.

The modern chapter is transatlantic: Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the largest American military hospital outside the United States, stands in the forest above town — for decades the first haven for wounded flown from the world's crisis zones, an institution of quiet global significance that has woven American families deep into Palatine daily life, with the vast Ramstein community adjoining.

Between castle and clinic, the town works its Westricher trades: the old town around St Andreas — sheltering Sickingen's tomb — the market street's businesses, and the sandstone-and-forest countryside of the Sickingen Heights, where the Palatinate Forest's western reaches offer trails from the castle gate. Armour yielding to artillery, and artillery's harvest tended in turn: Landstuhl holds both lessons on one wooded hill.