Lindau

Lindau floats. The old town occupies its own island in Lake Constance, moored to the shore by bridges, and its harbour entrance is southern Germany's most photographed maritime gesture: the Bavarian Lion, six metres of seated stone vigilance, facing the new lighthouse across the gap, with the lake spreading beyond to the Alps — on clear days the Säntis and the Austrian and Swiss shores compose a backdrop no stage designer would dare invent. Behind the harbour, the Maximilianstrasse parades arcaded merchant houses and frescoed façades; the old town hall wears its painted chronicle like a picture book, recalling the imperial diet held here and the free city's centuries of lake-borne trade on the route to Italy.

Since 1951 the island has hosted one of the scientific world's gentlest traditions: the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, where each summer dozens of Nobel Prize winners gather with hundreds of young researchers from around the globe — physics one year, medicine or chemistry the next — turning the lakeside promenade into the world's most casual concentration of genius.

The seasons bring sails, the child-thronged harbour festival, casino evenings and concerts in the Stadttheater — a converted medieval church — while the Pfänder and the Bregenz festival's floating stage wait minutes away across the Austrian line. An island, a lion, a lake full of Alps: Lindau needs no further argument.