Schopfheim

Schopfheim is the elder statesman of the Wiese valley. Chartered by the lords of Rötteln in the thirteenth century, it counts as the oldest town of the Markgräflerland — the sunny margravial country in Germany's southwestern corner — and its old town keeps the seniority visible: the market square's ensemble around the old Rathaus, the venerable church of St Michael with its medieval frescoes standing guard over the graveyard quarter, gabled lanes remembering market centuries between Black Forest and Basel.

The valley wrote the industrial chapter: the Wiese's water power strung the corridor with textile mills in the nineteenth century, Schopfheim's factories spinning and printing for international markets; their brick halls now house new trades, and the town honours a gentler native voice — the philosopher Max Picard, born here in 1888, essayist of silence in a noisy century. Johann Peter Hebel's Alemannic muse haunts the whole valley's dialect and calendar besides.

Geography is the standing luxury: Basel's trams, museums and airport lie half an hour down the valley — the Wiese cycle path runs there almost flat — while behind town rise the Dinkelberg's orchard hills and the southern Black Forest's first great summits, with the Wiesental railway threading toward Todtnau's heights. Vineyards one way, fir forests the other, Switzerland at the valley's mouth: Schopfheim has aged well in an enviable address.