Schwalmstadt

Schwalmstadt dresses the fairy tale. The Schwalm country's famous folk costume — the women's dress with its small red cap — gave the region its beloved identity as Rotkäppchenland, Little Red Riding Hood's country: the Grimms' tale and the Schwälmer Tracht grew together in the popular imagination, and the double town keeps the embroidered originals in its museums, brings them out for the great festivals, and signs the whole district's trails and stations with the red cap.

The two halves have distinct temperaments. Treysa contributes the medieval market town: half-timbered lanes rising to the Totenkirche's evocative ruin and the old walls, merchant Hesse in oak and plaster. Ziegenhain answers with geometry: the moated star fortress of the Hessian landgraves — among Germany's notable Renaissance fortifications — whose ramparts, museum and garrison church enclose a complete little world; its name travelled in the "Ziegenhainer", the knotted walking stick beloved of wandering students.

The countryside completes the picture-book: the Schwalm's meadows and willow lines, villages of massive timbered farmsteads, and — a neighbourly footnote of distinction — Willingshausen just east, where Germany's oldest painters' colony set up its easels among the costumed farm folk in the nineteenth century. A red cap, a star fortress, painted peasants: Schwalmstadt keeps Hesse's imagination in traditional dress.