Heidelberg

Heidelberg is a small town with big numbers: around 13.9 million visitors a year against a little over 1.8 million overnight stays. That gap is the whole town in one sentence — most arrive by coach around eleven, walk the Hauptstraße up to the castle and are gone by five. Stay the night and you get the same town without them — so book the room first and plan the rest around it.

The castle is a ruin, and that is the point. French troops blew it up twice, in 1689 and 1693, lightning set it alight in 1764, and it was never fully rebuilt — half the facade stands, half is open to the sky. The ticket is €11 and covers the funicular both ways, the courtyard, the Great Tun and the German Pharmacy Museum. The interiors are seen only on a guided tour of about an hour, €6 extra. The courtyard runs 9–18, last entry at half past five.

The Great Tun sits in the cellar and looks less like a barrel than a room: built in 1751, it holds around 219,000 litres. It was never full for long because it leaked. Opposite stands a figure of Perkeo, the court dwarf who by legend drank nothing but wine and died the day somebody handed him a glass of water. The story is probably invented; the barrel isn't. The pharmacy museum is in the same wing and easy to miss, even though it's already on your ticket.

For the view of the castle you cross the river. From the Old Bridge the Schlangenweg climbs in tight paved switchbacks and reaches the Philosophenweg in about fifteen minutes — a path along the north slope from which the whole town appears at once. It is named for the professors who walked it, and it is still quiet up there at two in the afternoon, when the Hauptstraße is impassable. The climb is steep and unshaded, so mornings are noticeably easier.