Stuttgart

Stuttgart invented the automobile and planted vineyards in its city centre. Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz motorised the world from this valley — the Mercedes-Benz and Porsche museums now face each other across town like rival cathedrals — while working vineyards still descend nearly to the main station, and the Stäffele, the city's hundreds of vineyard stairways, offer the steepest urban hiking in Germany. The Württemberg residence gave high culture princely quarters: the Staatsgalerie, its Stirling extension a postmodern landmark, holds masterworks from Rembrandt to Picasso; Hegel was born in the old town — his house museum honours philosophy's great systematiser; and the Liederhalle's angled halls host a concert life led by two radio-era orchestras merged into the SWR Symphonieorchester and the Stuttgart Philharmonic. The Staatstheater complex claims twin world fame: the Stuttgart Ballet, forged by John Cranko into one of the art's supreme companies, and the Staatsoper, so often named Germany's "Opera House of the Year" that the title seemed a subscription — with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and the International Bach Academy adding choral-orchestral authority. Even utopia visited: the Weissenhof Estate, built 1927 by Le Corbusier, Mies and modernism's whole vanguard, is UNESCO-listed world heritage. Cars below, vines between, Corbusier above: Stuttgart, sensibly arranged.