Germany travel guide: choosing your cities and bases

The short answer

Germany is a federal country of 16 states, and its sights are spread across them rather than gathered in one capital.[1] The useful first decision is not which ticket to buy but which city to sleep in, and that follows from what you want to see: royal palaces, cathedrals, Hanseatic brick towns, museums, or the places where the twentieth century's history is remembered.

XTOUR's Germany pages are built around twelve cities and towns. The table groups them with the XTOUR guides that start from each, and names the places reached from a base that are not inside it. XTOUR holds no routing or travel-time data for Germany, so it does not say how far apart these bases are, how long a day trip takes, or how many nights each deserves.

The table restates the sections below, where each state and each "not in it" is sourced; "none listed" means XTOUR's guides name none, not that none exist. Membership of this table is XTOUR's grouping of its own guides, not a statement that a place belongs to a city.

Berlin, and Potsdam as a city of its own

Berlin is the capital and a federal state in its own right, surrounded by the state of Brandenburg.[1] XTOUR's Berlin guides cover Museum Island's museums and tickets, whose five buildings the German Commission for UNESCO lists as a World Heritage site in Berlin.[6] For the city's memorials, XTOUR's guides set out what each foundation says about its own sites and visitor rules: the Berlin Wall Foundation's sites and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. See the Berlin destination page.

Potsdam is not part of Berlin. The Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation gives Sanssouci Palace's address as Maulbeerallee, 14469 Potsdam, and the German Commission for UNESCO lists the palaces-and-parks World Heritage site under two federal states, Berlin and Brandenburg, naming the Babelsberg observatory, the Pfingstberg and the Alexandrowka colony in Potsdam and Glienicke Park with the Pfaueninsel in Berlin.[5][4] The city of Potsdam's own site calls it Brandenburg's state capital.[9] Its guide is Potsdam's Sanssouci palaces and tickets, and the Potsdam destination page treats it as its own destination.

Munich, Füssen and the Bavarian palaces

Munich is one of five XTOUR bases in Bavaria, with Füssen, Nuremberg, Bamberg and Regensburg. Its palace guide, Munich Residenz or Nymphenburg Palace, starts from the Residenz, which the Bavarian Palace Administration describes as the seat of government and residence of Bavaria's dukes, electors and kings from 1508 to 1918, and today as one of the state's museum complexes.[7]

The Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site is not in Munich: its own site gives its address in the town of Dachau and places it on the grounds of the former concentration camp set up there on 22 March 1933.[12] What the memorial says about its history and about visiting, in its own words, is in Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, and the rules the German memorials ask visitors to keep, site by site, are in memorial site conduct in Germany.

Füssen, which its own site places in the Allgäu in Bavaria, is on XTOUR as the town for Neuschwanstein, but it is a base, not the castle's location: the Bavarian Palace Administration gives Neuschwanstein's address as 87645 Schwangau.[8][10] Tickets for Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castle are covered in Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau tickets. The same administration's page says Ludwig II's four palaces, Neuschwanstein, Linderhof, Herrenchiemsee and the King's House on Schachen, have been World Heritage since 2025; Ludwig II's palaces compares them.[8]

Dresden

Dresden is Saxony's base on XTOUR; the city's own archive describes its Elbe Valley as having been Saxony's first independent World Heritage site.[13] The German Commission for UNESCO lists that site as removed from the World Heritage List in 2009.[3] When it was inscribed is a question the Commission's list and UNESCO's own pages answer differently, as Germany's World Heritage sites sets out. XTOUR's two Dresden guides are the Royal Palace, Green Vault and Zwinger, on the state art collections' tickets, and visiting the Frauenkirche.

Cologne, and the Rhine that is elsewhere

Cologne is in North Rhine-Westphalia, and its cathedral, built from 1248 to 1880, has been a World Heritage site since 1996.[14] XTOUR has three Cologne pieces: cathedral tickets, tower and treasury, the cathedral workshop that maintains it, and the Rhenish carnival.

The castle-lined stretch of the Rhine is not Cologne's. The German Commission for UNESCO places the Upper Middle Rhine Valley between Bingen, Rüdesheim and Koblenz, in Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate.[15] XTOUR covers it as a region in its own right, in Upper Middle Rhine Valley castles, with no base attached.

Nuremberg

Nuremberg carries two very different kinds of history, and XTOUR keeps them in separate guides. The Imperial Castle is one of the Bavarian Palace Administration's properties, listed in its Bavarian palace menu, and its history page records Nuremberg as a royal property from 1050 and a place where rulers stopped and Imperial Diets met.[16][11] The Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds and the Memorium Nuremberg Trials is a separate guide to those two sites, in their own words.

Heidelberg

Heidelberg, in Baden-Württemberg, has one XTOUR guide, Heidelberg Castle.[1] The castle's operator describes red sandstone ruins above the Neckar valley and the old town, the former residence of the counts palatine of the Rhine, later prince electors.[17]

The Hanseatic north: Lübeck, Hamburg, Wismar and Stralsund

Lübeck, in Schleswig-Holstein, was in the German Commission for UNESCO's words one of the most important Hanseatic cities from 1230 to 1535, and three areas of its old town have been World Heritage since 1987.[18] Its guide is Lübeck's old town and the European Hansemuseum.

Hamburg is a city and one of the 16 federal states, and its Speicherstadt and Kontorhaus District with the Chilehaus have been World Heritage since 2015.[20][1] XTOUR has no dedicated Hamburg guide yet.

Wismar and Stralsund, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, are two separate towns inscribed together in 2002 as one World Heritage site.[19] They are not XTOUR destinations, but have a guide of their own, Wismar and Stralsund's historic centres. The trading league that links all four is explained in the Hanseatic League and Hanseatic cities.

Bamberg and Regensburg

Two Bavarian old towns are XTOUR destinations without a guide yet. The German Commission for UNESCO places Bamberg in Franconia, in the north of Bavaria, with three historic districts inside its 142-hectare World Heritage site (1993).[21] Regensburg 's old town with Stadtamhof has been World Heritage since 2006, and was the seat of the Perpetual Imperial Diet from 1663 to 1806.[22] Bamberg's Kaiserdom is one of the examples in German heritage words.

Guides that apply wherever you stay

Some decisions do not belong to one city. XTOUR's country-wide pieces cover them:

• Who runs Germany's palaces and castles: why a pass from one state's palace operator says nothing about another's.
• German heritage words: Dom, Münster, Schloss, Burg and Residenz, as the buildings use them.
• Germany's World Heritage sites: all 55, as the German Commission for UNESCO counts them.[2]
• Germany's intangible heritage: the ten UNESCO entries and the national inventory.
• German Christmas markets in Nuremberg, Dresden and Cologne: each market's own announced dates.
• German food's protected names and Germany's wine regions: what the EU registers say about where a product must come from.
• Memorial site conduct in Germany: the rules each memorial publishes, site by site.

What XTOUR does not cover

XTOUR does not publish flights, rail or driving routes, travel times, distances between cities, hotels, weather, entry requirements or costs for Germany, and it does not rank cities or say which suits a first trip. Its guides report what each site's operator says about tickets and visits on the date they were read. For the country page, see Germany.