Wuppertal

Wuppertal hangs its trains from the sky. The Schwebebahn, the suspended monorail gliding above the Wupper river since 1901, remains the world's oldest electric elevated railway of its kind and the city's beloved emblem — thirteen kilometres of Jugendstil stations and airborne commuting, with one legendary passenger: Tuffi the circus elephant, who in 1950 jumped from a carriage into the river, survived, and entered municipal immortality. The railway stitched together the textile towns of Barmen and Elberfeld, whose ribbon-weaving wealth built steep streets of ornate façades — and whose chemistry laboratories, at the Bayer works founded in Barmen, produced aspirin.

The valley bred dialecticians and dancers. Friedrich Engels was born in Barmen — his family's manufacturing fortunes financing, with fine irony, the critique of capitalism; his house anchors a museum of early industry. And in 1973 a choreographer took over the local ballet and changed world theatre: Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal made this valley city the global capital of dance theatre, her company still performing her repertoire to pilgrims from every continent, with a dedicated Pina Bausch centre in development.

The Historische Stadthalle, whose gilded great hall possesses acoustics musicians rank among Europe's finest, houses the Wuppertal Symphony; the zoo climbs its hillside; and the Schwebebahn swings overhead, punctual as ever — the avant-garde, in Wuppertal, being a century-old habit.