Münster

Münster signed the peace that invented modern Europe: in its town hall's Friedenssaal, in 1648, the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War and established the sovereign state system the world still inhabits — the wood-panelled hall stands as it stood, one of history's true rooms. Outside, the Prinzipalmarkt's arcaded gables parade patrician confidence rebuilt stone for stone after the war; above St Lambert's church still hang the three iron cages that displayed the corpses of the Anabaptist leaders of 1536, when Münster briefly became a radical "New Jerusalem" — history here spares no detail.

Today's radicalism is two-wheeled: Münster is Germany's bicycle capital, with more bikes than inhabitants and a promenade ring where cycles outrank cars absolutely; the hundred thousand students of one of Germany's largest universities pedal the statistics higher. Every ten years the Skulptur Projekte scatters world-class contemporary sculpture through the streets — an exhibition so influential that the art world sets its calendar by it, and the city keeps the best pieces.

The cathedral's astronomical clock performs its noon procession as it has since 1543; the Picasso Museum, Germany's only, holds his complete lithographs; and the theatre, the symphony orchestra and the university's ancient church-music tradition sound the season. Peace, provocation and pedals: Münster's formula, working since 1648.