Schwäbisch Gmünd

Schwäbisch Gmünd is the oldest town of the Hohenstaufen — founded by the dynasty whose home mountain rises on the horizon — and the cradle of a dynasty greater still: the Parler family of master builders. In the Heilig-Kreuz-Münster, begun in the 1310s, Heinrich Parler created the first great hall church of German Gothic, a luminous forest of equal-height aisles that changed the direction of the style; his son Peter Parler went out from Gmünd to build St Vitus Cathedral and the Charles Bridge in Prague, making the family name synonymous with the cathedral age. The minster's sculpted portals and choir remain the town's masterpiece — a provincial church of European consequence.

Gold and silver became the local genius: for centuries Gmünd has been Germany's city of precious metals, its workshops supplying courts and churches, its design school continuing the trade, the silver thread running from Baroque monstrances to contemporary jewellery. The market square, ringed by Baroque gables around the Marienbrunnen, and the surviving towers of the town wall frame a centre that wears its age lightly — refreshed by the 2014 state garden show that regreened the Rems and Josefle valleys.

The town's festival is its faith made audible: the Festival of European Church Music, held every summer since 1989, fills the minster and the town's churches with masses, oratorios and premieres, awarding its prize to composers and interpreters of sacred music — the Parlers' stone polyphony answered, annually, in sound.