Siegen

Siegen's most famous son was born here almost by accident, and the city has gratefully claimed him ever since: Peter Paul Rubens came into the world in Siegen in 1577, during his parents' Westphalian exile from Antwerp's religious turmoil — the future prince of baroque painting spending his first months in a Siegerland hill town. Siegen answers the gift with the Siegerlandmuseum's Rubens paintings in the Upper Castle and with the international Rubens Prize, awarded here to major European painters since 1957.

The town wears two castles for its two historic masters: the Upper Castle of the Catholic and the Lower Castle of the Protestant lines of Nassau-Siegen — the dynasty that also supplied the Dutch royal house's ancestors — facing each other across a hilltop old town crowned by the Nikolaikirche's unique hexagonal nave and its golden crown-spire, the "Krönchen", the city's emblem. Below and all around lies the Siegerland's real wealth: iron, mined and smelted here for over two millennia, charcoal forests coppiced in the distinctive Hauberg rotation that shaped the whole landscape's economy.

Today a young university animates the slopes, the Apollo Theatre and the philharmonic orchestra of Southern Westphalia carry the season, and the surrounding hills offer the green reward of any climb. Iron below, Rubens above: Siegen's coordinates, honestly earned.