Weinheim

Weinheim is the two-castle town where the Bergstraße turns Mediterranean. Above the roofs stand both its guardians in one view: the medieval ruin of Burg Windeck and, higher, the Wachenburg — a castle completed only in 1928 by student corporations, Germany's youngest "real" castle — their double silhouette the town's emblem and sunset business. Below, the Bergstraße's famous climate does its work: almonds and figs in the gardens, spring arriving weeks early, vines on the Hermannshof's slopes.

Gardens are the town's connoisseur fame: the Hermannshof show garden ranks among Europe's most influential planting laboratories — perennial compositions studied by designers worldwide, open freely beside the Schlosspark — while the Exotenwald behind the castle park assembles one of Germany's great exotic forests: giant sequoias, cedars and hundred-odd foreign species on the Odenwald slope, a walkable arboretum planted by nineteenth-century ambition.

The old town earns the strolling: the Marktplatz's gabled taverns, the tanners' quarter of Gerberbach lanes, the baroque Schloss housing the town hall. Industry has a world name too — Freudenberg, the global technology group, grew from Weinheim tanneries and still leads from here. The Burgenweg climbs, the Odenwald opens, Heidelberg glitters ten minutes south. Two castles, one microclimate, gardens of reference: Weinheim ripens early and ages well.