Offenburg

Offenburg is where German democracy first wrote itself down. In the hall of the Salmen inn, on 12 September 1847, the radical liberals around Hecker and Struve proclaimed the "Demands of the People" — thirteen articles calling for freedom of the press, of conscience and assembly, for civic equality and a people's militia: the first democratic programme on German soil, a year before the 1848 revolution it helped ignite. The restored Salmen is now a memorial and cultural venue, and Offenburg keeps the anniversary with an annual Festival of Freedom — a small city with a founding document.

Its situation is enviable: capital of the Ortenau, Germany's second-largest wine district, with Riesling and Spätburgunder ripening on the first Black Forest slopes, and the Kinzig valley opening behind it toward cuckoo-clock country. The old town rewards strolling — the Fischmarkt with its Renaissance well, the Baroque Rathaus and Landratsamt, the Ritterhaus museum, the quiet cloister of the Capuchin monastery — and the weekly market under the plane trees is among Baden's most abundant, the Rhine plain's kitchen garden on display.

The modern city runs on print and images: Hubert Burda Media makes Offenburg one of Germany's publishing capitals, its campus a surprising splash of glass among the vineyards. Freiburg and Strasbourg lie half an hour away in opposite directions — but Offenburg, positioned between cathedral cities, keeps its own counsel: wine, print, and the habit of liberty.