Ulm

Ulm built the tallest church tower on earth and produced the man who redefined the universe beneath it — a fair day's work for a mid-sized Danube city. The Minster's openwork spire, completed in 1890 to its medieval plans, rises 161.5 metres; the 768 steps reward climbers with the Alps on clear days, and the church below them, a parish church, not even a cathedral, holds the magnificent carved choir stalls where humanists and sibyls face each other in oak. Albert Einstein was born a few streets away in 1879; the city marks the site and the irony — the family left when he was one, but Ulm claims relativity's birthplace forever.

The city's folklore prefers its dreamers airborne: the Tailor of Ulm, who in 1811 attempted to fly across the Danube on homemade wings and landed in it, is commemorated with affection as patron of premature ideas. The Fishermen's Quarter, all half-timbered houses leaning over canals — including the demonstratively crooked Schiefes Haus — and the intact city wall along the river keep the old trading town tangible; across the water lies Bavarian Neu-Ulm, the Danube doubling as state border.

Post-war Ulm added a modern legend: the Hochschule für Gestaltung, the design school that inherited the Bauhaus mantle and shaped the look of the functional world. Theatre, symphony and the Minster's organ recitals sound beneath the record-holding spire — aiming high being the municipal habit.