Hello and welcome to the second part of your Christmas bonus, my entirely subjective list of places to visit in Germany today.

We'll cover the remaining Bundeslander, namely Nordlein, Westphaln, Rhineland, Pfalz, Saarland, Sachsen, Sachsen, Anhalt, Schleswig Holstein, Thuringen, and two more places that I have chosen entirely because I can now.

One of the legacies of the Holy Roman Empire is that Germany does not have just one place where everything happens.

Where politicians, entrepreneurs, bankers, artists and actors travel on the same underground trains and eat at the same restaurants.

Berlin is the capital with its political class of members of the Bundestag, the journalists and lobbyists, and at the same time a major gathering place for artists, musicians and thespians of all stripes.

And home to many tech start ups.

But the bankers are in Frankfurt.

The headquarters of the major companies are in Stuttgart, Munich, Dusseldorf and spread around everywhere.

Several of the major publishing houses are in Hamburg, the private TV stations in Munich.

But none of these places have a monopoly on any of these activities.

There are banks headquartered in Munich and major corporates in Frankfurt.

There is great theatre in Dusseldorf, Dresden and Schwerin.

There are world leading companies headquartered in tiny towns like Kunstelsau.

And that cuts right through to the major cultural sites.

Though the quip that there were three hundred and sixty five states in the Holy Roman Empire is vastly exaggerated.

There were once maybe about a hundred capital cities from splendid Dresden to tiny Hohen Solern Hechingen, each with its princely residence, cathedral, grand monastery and theatre.

The the great artists either travelled from court to court, leaving behind their works here or there, or stayed in one of the free imperial cities operating large workshops.

Therefore, what you cannot do in Germany is to go to one city and see all the major treasures the country has collected over the centuries, as you can do in the Louvre or the British Museum and the National Gallery.

In Germany you have to move around, see one thing at a time.

Always in the knowledge that that its significant counterpart may be a few hundred miles north, south, east or west of you.

This is one of the legacies of the medieval empire that Germany has in common with Italy.

And hence we are going through each of the Bundeslander trying to pick out one absolute must see.

And one place where you are likely to encounter fewer people.

And as we have covered nine Bundeslender up to make Limburg Fourpommen already, our next location we will have to get to is Nordrejn Westphalen.

Now if we talk about must sees, Aachen is where every upstanding listener of the history of the Germans will go, and it is undoubtedly the right thing to do.

The Imperial Chapel, with its Roman columns brought across from Rome and Ravenna and Barbarossa's magnificent chandelier provides suitable surroundings for the coronation since Otto the Great.

And if you happen to go there, take a look at the treasures in the Dom Museum worth absolutely every second of it.

And do not forget to listen to the ghoulish opening of Charlemagne's grave by Otto III in episode 14 just before you go.

A close second place you should not miss is Cologne.

The city has been mentioned 500 times already in the show, and there are likely another 500 incidences to come.

Germany's most venerable and for a long time largest city has been the stage for events from the prologue episode to the Siege of Noise we discussed in episode 214.

As the seat of one of the seven Prince electors, a major pilgrimage destination and the main hub in the trade between the Empire and England, Cologne often played a decisive role.

Its history is so varied and significant it warrants its own podcast the History of Cologne by Willem Fromme.

Of the things to see in Cologne, the cathedral and its shrine of the Three Wise Men is unavoidable.

I would also recommend the Rmisch Germanische Museum that displays items related to the long history of Roman presence in Germany and specifically in Cologne.

And do not miss the remains of Cologne's history as a free imperial merchant city and senior member of the Hanseatic League.

There's the Overstolzen house from the 13th century and the town hall with its 16th century porch.

There's the Gurzenich, or banqueting hall of the merchants of the city, which dates from 1441 and the 16th century arsenal.

All are reconstructed on the outside, though the interior has sadly been lost to war damage.

These alone would justify a visit, but what makes it a must see are the 12 great Romanesque churches, including Sangerion Ursula Sanct Maria M. Capitol, Sankt Kunibert Sanct Pantaleon, Sanct Apostolen and Gross Sankt Martin.

Few cities in Europe can boast such a density of sacral architecture built between the 4th and the 13th century.

Once you have survived the marathon of Romanesque art, head down to Fruys or Zuna im Valfish or Sion for refreshing Kolsch and the unique atmosphere of a classic Cologne beerhouse.

And if you do that, you have to then take the S Bahn down to Cologne's eternal rival, Dusseldorf, and taste their Altbier in one of their traditional beer houses like the Fuchsjen the sifjen or the 18 million people spread over 34,000 square kilometers, making Nord Rhein Westphaln one of Europe's most densely populated areas.

In particular, the almost continuous urban landscape between Dusseldorf and Dortmund, otherwise known as the Ruhr.

I would love to say that the Ruhr is pretty, but that would be pushing it.

There are pretty places though, like the Bredeni lake and its park with the villa of the Krupp family, or the Schwebebahn in Wuppertal.

And several of these cities are actually very old.

Assen Abbey boasts an ottonian Westwerk and 10th century artworks.

And Dortmund had been a member of the Hanse and still retains some vestiges of that time, whilst Mercator famously established a cartography business in Duisburg.

If people travel there from afar, it is very rarely for these cultural artifacts, but it's usually related to football or soccer for our American friends, given the region hosts some of the most successful and the most storied clubs.

But there is another way to get an understanding what made this state where almost one fifth of Germans live, and that is to visit the Seche Zollfein, a coal mining industrial complex that counts amongst the largest of its kind in Europe.

It operated from 1847 to 1986 and has now been turned into a museum.

Or to be more precise, one of the many buildings on the sites is now the Ruhr Museum, providing an insight into how this region turned into one of the largest industrial agglomerations in the world.

But what impressed me more than the exhibits is the sheer scale and awesome beauty of the structure.

It comprises two large complexes, the main with its shaft 12, built in the Bauhaus style.

That is the basis of the claim that this is the most beautiful coal mine in the world.

And then there's the nearby coking plant, a 600 meter long Baymot.

The canal that ran alongside once held water to cool down the coke.

Today it is used in winter.

It's one of the coolest ice rinks I can imagine.

Now, Secher Zollverein, as I said, has a museum, but it is not a museum.

It is a vibrant center with 150 startups and corporations using the space, a range of cultural institutions, a branch of the university and shops.

Since opening in the 1990s, Seche Zollfein has become a weekend destination for people from all around, including my cousin who took me there and left me speechless.

Now that is unfortunately all we can cover in Nordre and Westphalen, leaving such gems as paderborn.

See episode 19 and Munster for later exploration.

It is time to head down to Rheinlandfals, the state created in 1946 from chunks of Prussia's Rhine province, Rhinehessen and the Bavarian Palatinate.

This is the land of the Archbishops of Mainzentrie, the Counts Palatine on the Rhine, the Counts of Nassau, and most significantly, the various barons on their castles overlooking the Rhine River.

Which gets me to the must see in Rhineland Pfals, and that is the Rhine Valley, namely the bit between Mainz and Bonn.

I know it is on everybody's bucket list for a visit in Germany, but so is Heidelbergen.

We covered that as well.

What is most fascinating is the gap between its perception and what it actually signifies in German history.

Turner and Bayern had made the Rhine Valley into one of the main destinations on the Grand Tour, and many a milord traveling along citing these stances from Childe Harrod's pilgrimage.

The castled crag of Drachenfels frowns over the wide and winding Rhine, whose breast of waters broadly swells between the banks which bear the vine and hills all rich with blossom'd trees, and fields which promise corn and wine, and scatter'd cities crowning these, whose far wide walls along them shine, have strew'd a scene which eyes should see with double joy.

Wert thou with me.

The river nobly foams and flows the charm of this enchanted ground and all its thousand turns Disclose Some fresher beauty varying round the haughty's breast Its wish might bound though life to dwell delighted here Nor could on earth a spot be found.

To nature and to me so dear could thy dear eyes in following mine still sweeten more these banks of Rhine.

And as the boat floated between the Lorelei and Katzen Ellenbogen, the representative of Thomas Cook, would then sell the tourists steel engravings of Burg Katz, the Moiseturumen Bingen or Stolzenfels Castle, which they would hang on their walls to dream of grim robber barons and helpless prelates and damsels in distress.

All these images and dreams of the romantic Rhine ended up in the rubbish bin when the Germans and Brits faced each other across the trenches in World War I.

That romantic yearning for crumbling castles, picturesque towns and, to quote Byron again, peasant girls with deep blue eyes and hands which offer early flowers was not an exclusively British obsession.

The Germans were at it too.

Goethe, Hulderlin and Kleist started the literary tradition that peaked with Heinrich Heine and Clemens von Brentano.

Schumann and Liszt composed piano pieces, symphonies and lieder Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungen takes place on the Rhine before we get into the less salubrious world of the Wacht am Rhein and Carl Zugmaier's famous wine, women and song.

During the 19th century, rich industrialists and the Prussian royal family turned the castle ruins into what a fairy tale Gothic castle was supposed to look like.

The whole place is so drenched in narratives, myths and anecdotes, it is a dream world made real.

A dream world that obfuscates its real significance.

Because the Rhine had been the backbone of the European economy for centuries, the main transmission line that connected the Low Countries and Italy, its castles were toll stations funding princely ambitions.

May they have been territorial, political or religious.

All through German history, its cities were centers of trade and innovation as ideas and technologies moved south to north and north to south.

All through them, its villages made the world's favorite white wine, etc, etc.

And its gorges take a trip down the river, either on the train that follows the banks of the river or on a ship or boat.

Going from one of the absolute top destinations in Germany, we now go to one that is quite incomprehensibly overlooked, and that is Trier.

Trier may not formally be Germany's oldest city, but it certainly is the one that holds more ancient Roman buildings than any other and could easily compete with the better known places in France or Spain.

Augusta Treverorum became one of the four capitals of the Roman Empire in 293 AD and grew to between 75,000 and 100,000 inhabitants.

It retains its famous city gate, the Porta Nigra, from this period.

The Aula Palatina, the basilica that once served as the throne room of Emperor Constantine, was preserved as a church, making it the largest extant hall from classical antiquity.

Its cathedral goes back to a church commissioned again by the Emperor Constantine and retains much of the old structure with later additions in the 10th, 11th and 12th century.

Trier obviously comes with the usual complement of amphitheater, ruins of a Roman bath and a still functioning 2nd century bridge.

The Rheinische Landesmuseum holds more exhibits from Roman times, including the famous wine ship of Neumagen.

That explains a lot about the trade on the Moselle and the Rhine and Roman navigation.

And it also holds the largest treasure of Roman gold coins ever found.

And if you have time, drop into the city library of all places, because that holds the Codex Ecberti, one of the great Ottonian illuminated manuscripts.

A reminder that Trier was not just important in Roman times, but had been a crucial Archbishopric throughout the Middle Ages and and into the early modern period.

Who could forget Baldwin of Luxembourg, brother of Emperor Henry VII and Eminence Grise of the Empire for most of the 14th century.

Now that is of course only a small section of the delights of Rheinland Pfalz.

You will almost certainly want to go to Speyer as well and marvel at its great cathedral we described already in episode 25.

Or spend some time in Mainz, home to the most senior of prince electors and as well as of JOHANNES Gutenberg, episode 186 to 88.

Or follow the river to Worms, original home of the Salian Empress and site of the Nibelungenlied.

Fortunately, our next destination is not far.

The smallest of the territorial German states.

The Saarland is where we go next.

And I have to make a grave admission.

I have never done more than just drive through.

I will of course remedy that, but what it means is that I cannot really offer any personal recommendations.

Amongst the things I have found that could entice me to go to the Saarland is first up the Saar Schleife, a gigantic bend of the river Saar caused by this stream hitting a hard quartzite rock.

It looks definitely very cool.

The other location would be the Folklinger Eisenwerke, the only fully intact steelworks from the 19th and 20th century.

There are visiting tours and a museum explaining how this enormous facility operated, as well as special exhibitions.

So if you decide to skip the Sechet Zollfehein in Essen and you want to better understand Germany's industrial past, this might be a suitable replacement.

Our next Bundesland is almost due east from here.

It is Saxony in all its splendor.

When we talk about Saxony, as in the kingdom and now Bundesland or Saxony as opposed to the stem duchy of Saxony, we are talking about a state created by and for the House of Vittin.

For much of the 17th and 18th century this principality outshone Prussia, its neighbour to the north.

Augustus the Strong and then his son Augustus III were both electors of Saxony and kings of Poland.

They maintained two capitals, Dresden and Warsaw, where they made a credible attempt at competing with the Versailles of Louis xiv.

This expenditure relegated the dynasty back to the second League, but left behind some of the grandest and most impressive baroque architecture on German soil.

So in other words, Dresden is a must see.

Several of the structures had been heavily damaged, even wiped out by the bombing of Dresden in Florida February 1945.

But much has now been reconstructed.

In particular, the Frauenkirche has become a symbol of reconciliation and rebirth.

The whole process had, however, started long before under the GDR government, with the reconstruction of the Semper oper in the 1980s.

And it continued later on with the almost complete rebuild of, for example, the Taschenberg Palais and the Residenzschloss.

I worked in Dresden in 1991 and I had the chance to visit the building site of the Residenzschloss.

Seeing the concrete walls of what is today the audience chamber of Augustus the Strong was one of the weirder experiences I ever had in sightseeing.

But whilst much of the city centre had suffered horribly, there are several absolute gems of the heyday of Baroque Dresden that have survived at least unaltered.

There's the Alte Gemelde Gallerie, that houses the collection of Italian Renaissance art put together by the otherwise hapless Augustus iii.

And the Groenege Wohlbe, the treasury of the House of Wetin that had been made accessible as a museum as early as 1729 as a means to project the immense wealth of the family.

Going a bit further afield, you may want to see Meissen, where the principality started, and its castle, where Johann Friedrich Boetscher established the famous Meissner porcelain Manufaktur, the first place where porcelain was produced in Europe.

Porcelain was an obsession amongst aristocrats in the 17th and 18th century, but had gone into total overdrive amongst the German princes.

Everyone had a porcelain collection, usually housed in a small Chinese room full of mirrors and golden wall shelves.

In Dresden, you had an entire palace to house the collection.

The Japanese palace in the Neustadt.

Today the collection is shown in the Zwinger, once part of the city's defenses, but repurposed by Augustus the Strong as well.

A party palace, orangery garden, just something very unique and strangely wonderful.

A Japanese palace was of course, not enough exoticism for the spendthrift Saxon rulers, so they had a Chinese palace too.

In Pilnitz, just a few miles upriver, Pillnitz is of course, not just one small Chinese villa, but three.

Three separate buildings.

One on the water, one on the hill and one in the middle.

And there's Moritzburg, the fairy tale castle in a lake full of hunting trophies.

And, and, and, and, and I'm going to shut up now.

And if you go to Dresden, just spare a few days for Leipzig too.

Where Dresden was, where the money was spent, Leipzig is where it was made.

And today Leipzig is arguably the more vibrant of the two cities.

When it comes to overspending, the two Augustuses are hard to beat.

But it can be done.

The man who achieved that sheer impossible feat was Hermann Frst von Puckler Muskau.

He is today mostly remembered for first puchlar ice cream, a mix of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry flavors.

He did not even invent himself, but was just named after him in his honour.

He was a famous dandy who kept a team of white stags to pull his carriage.

But his true achievement was as a gardener.

His two parks, one in Badmuskau in Saxony and the other in Brenitz in Brandenburg, are absolute high points in European garden architecture.

Laid out in an English style, The park stretches 5.6 square kilometers across what is now the German Polish border.

As you would expect, this is an artificial landscape of lakes and hills dotted with various follies in pavilions.

The sheer scale of the project pushed the man who was born as one of the richest noblemen in Germany, deep into debt.

In a desperate attempt to raise funds, he and his wife divorced so that he could go to England and find a wealthy heiress.

That scheme turned out to be a touch too obvious and the British press made a mockery of the German prince's attempt to woo an English rose.

Puckler described events in hilarious letters to his now divorced but still very much loved wife.

She then published these letters to rustle up more cash, which turned into a best seller.

And like a modern day sailing YouTuber, Puckler embarked on a new career as a travel writer.

He journeyed across the Ottoman Empire, even made it to Ethiopia and Sudan.

One of the souvenirs he brought back from his trip was an 11 year old Ethiopian enslaved girl that he installed in Bad Muskow, where she promptly succumbed to the inclement climate and probably just utter misery.

Money eventually ran out completely and Pukler had to sell his castle and gardens in Badmuskau in 1845 and move to Brenitz, where he could not stop himself and got gardening again.

He died in 1871.

Like his lifestyle, his religious convictions were very much at odds with the conservative world of 19th century Germany.

Since cremation was not yet permitted, he went round the problem by having his heart dissolved in sulphuric acid and ordered that his body should be embedded in caustic soda, caustic potash and caustic lime.

The granular remains were then buried underneath a pyramid in his garden.

His life really cries out for its own episode.

Moving swiftly, or in fact, not so very swiftly.

On we come to Sachsen Anhalt.

This is the land of Otto the Great, who is buried in Magdeburg Cathedral and his father, Heinrich de Fowler, whose grave is somewhere underneath the abbey church of Quedlinburg.

Even Barbarossa squeezed himself in.

Or the Kiffhauser, which is shared between Sachsen Anhalt and Thuringen.

The must see place here is also linked to these early medieval days.

It is the Cathedral of Naumburg, or more specifically the Stifterfigurun, the sculptures of the founders of the church.

These include the famously alluring Uther von Ballenstedt, but Also the other 11, each carved by an absolute master of the craft in the 13th century.

If you are following me on social media, you can find a post going through every single one of the 12 figures and their histories.

The second destination in this state is Dessau.

This is again another one of these tiny capitals, in this case the seat of the Dukes of Sachsen Anhalt, Dessau.

Not much of the old city of Dessau is left, unfortunately, apart from a ducal palace.

But halfway between Dessau and Wittenberg, famous for Luther's theses, is the garden landscape of Desaux Verlet, a set of interwoven palaces and parks that covers an impressive 142 square kilometers.

But that is not really the reason why I would suggest you go there.

The real attraction is the Bauhaus.

You can visit the original building where the Bauhaus school moved to after it had been more or less expelled from weimar in the 1920s.

It is a fascinating structure that, like much of the other ideas of the Bauhaus, had enormous influence in the way the world looks everywhere from Texas to Tokyo.

The Bauhaus museum is by the way, not in the actual Bauhaus building, but in the center of Dassau.

And also worth seeing.

Time to take our last trip up north and have a look at Schleswig Holstein.

As a sailor, this is my place along with Mecklenburg Vorpommern.

It is just stunningly beautiful if you have a soft spot for hard winds and sandy beaches.

Culturally, the must see place is of course Lubeck, the queen of the Hanse.

We did a whole series on the Hanse and the role of Lubeck within it.

We talked about the art and the culture that is in the main centered here.

That's episode 127, so I'm not sure what I can add in this episode.

Maybe take a marzipan safari.

Whilst Niederager has become the leading brand of German marzipan, there are four more manufacturers in Lubeck and true aficionados prefer either Mast or Martens or Karstens or Lubecka over that better known fare.

So there's lots to discover.

As for the second location in Schleswig Holstein, there are of course the islands, namely Syltic, which provides a uniquely German summer holiday experience, and of course any kind of water sports in the Fjorde on the Baltic shore, including but not limited to sailing.

But I would like to break a lance for the city of Schleswig, the seat of the Dukes of Holstein Gottorb, who occasionally ruled Denmark, Sweden and Russia, though not all at the same time.

There's an impressive palace here, with gardens and the like.

Beyond that, there are three unique and compelling things here.

The first are the remains of Hedeby or Haithabu, a Viking settlement that dominated the trade in the Baltic between the 8th and the 11th century.

You can see reconstructed Viking houses and a Viking museum explaining the significance of the place in international trade.

And in the seventh century, the Danes built a line of fortifications from Haithabu on the Baltic to the North Sea shore, and which remained the main Danish line of defense against invasions until the Schleswig Holstein War of 1864.

The Great Wall of China, begun around the same time, is admittedly more impressive, but had lost its military function in the 17th century already.

And then you have the Cathedral of Schleswig itself, a lovely Gothic church with an impressive carved main altar.

The funky bit is in the cloisters.

Like so many churches and monasteries, Schleswig too was given a massive makeover in the 19th century.

The creative renovation work here included the discovery and then enhancement of a frieze underneath the Massacre of the Innocents.

The frieze depicted various animals, including some quickly identified as turkeys.

This caused some confusion, given the original decoration dated back to 1320.

The only viable explanation was that the Vikings must have been to America before and had brought the motif of the Turkey back from their journeys.

That rapidly turned into a whole narrative of brave Nordic sailors spreading out to the American continent long before any Spaniard had ever held a compass under the Nazis.

The story that men from Schleswig had discovered America and traded with it for a long time and became canon.

It wasn't until 1948 that Kurt Wildte used X rays to prove that the turkeys were indeed a turkey placed there by the 19th century restorers.

Congratulations.

We have made it to the last Bundeslan in alphabetical order, but by no means the least.

If you look on a map of the Holy Roman Empire, say after the Peace of Westphalia, you see several large entities, Austrian and Spanish, Habsburg, Bavaria, Brandenburg, Prussia, Saxony, wurtemberg, Hessen, Brunswick, etc.

And then in between, all These tiny places.

And Thuringia is one of the regions where the chart says things like various Saxon duchies or unmappable micro territories.

And here in Thuringia is probably the most famous of these duo Dietz principalities.

These 12 square mile principalities, Sachsen, Weimar.

This tiny state, whose political position was so insignificant they did not even have to contribute their own soldiers to the Imperial Reichsmartrickel, but simply paid an equivalent tax, managed to attract Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Martin Wieland and Gottfried Hera to its court.

And they came here and lived there during the absolute height of their fame.

There is no real equivalent, unless you were to assume that Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and Jane Austen all decided to live together in the grounds of Belvoir Castle.

Very pretty, just a bit off the beaten track.

Weimar retains much that reminds one of these days when the country's greatest writer was also the Prime Minister of the state and walked across the park to have tea with the Duchess in her court of local baronesses.

Weimar is of course also the place where the national assembly hunkered down to write the constitution of the Republic in 1919.

Since Berlin was simply too dangerous, Thuringia has many more of these smaller state capitals, including Gotha, home of Prince Albert, and Meiningen, the capital of the Duchy of Sachsenmeiningen until 1918, complete with theatre and one of the oldest orchestras in the world.

And of course, Erfurt, beautifully restored to its late medieval glory.

I could go on, but the other place I would suggest you see in Turingen would probably be on most people's must see list anyway.

But again, I actually do make the rules, so I can break them if I want to.

Perched high above the town of Eisenach, Wartburg Castle offers sweeping views over forested hills that immediately justify the journey.

This is where Martin Luther found refuge and translated the New Testament into German, an act that shaped the language and transformed European religious life.

Walking through his modest room gives you an intimate connection to the ideas that changed the world.

Beyond the Reformation, Wartburg is also a cradle of German identity.

Medieval legends of competition between singers, the courtly life that disgusted St. Elizabeth of Thuringia and 19th century nationalism all converge within a its walls.

The architecture itself is striking, blending Romanesque foundations with later restorations that reflect the changing artistic ideals.

Equally compelling is the setting.

Wartwork sits amid hiking trails and quiet woodlands, allowing you to combine cultural discovery with nature.

It's everything with everything on it.

And that is where I called, or maybe I should End it.

But no, I promised you two more places than are purely subjectively my favorites amongst the must sees and the not so well known and top of the pops.

The place to be that others also go, at least for me, is Bamberg.

And if you go and you see one piece of art in Germany, make it the Bamberger Reiter.

Yes, I know the Nazis used him as an archetype of the Nordic race and national ideal, but which makes it even more ironic that he may or may not depict a Hungarian and was likely made by a French artist.

But put all this away in a box and just look at it.

The serenity of the figure, the elegance of the shapes, the mystery of its meaning, and the unusual position of an equestrian statue inside a church all makes this wonderfully bewildering and captivating.

And the dome is full of other wonders.

The marble sarcophagus of Pope Clement II that appears more Roman than medieval.

The stunning carvings of Tilman Riemenschneider on the grave of Henry II and Kunigunde.

And the modest box that holds the remains of Conrad III stuffed into a corner of the crypt by his ungrateful nephew Frederick barbarossa.

And more 13th century sculptures that take your breath away.

The city below too is stunning.

The of the few that survived intact, including a town hall on a bridge across the river, there's an episcopal palace by Walter Saar Neumann, not as breathtaking as the one in Wurzburg, but still impressive and beautiful.

And in the Bamberg Museum, you can see what may be the absolute pinnacle of Ottonian illuminated manuscripts, the Bamberg Apocalypse.

Since you are in the area, nip across to Bayreuth, not necessarily for Richard Wagner, but to see the theater built for the wedding of a daughter of the Maggraf in 1750 and still standing almost unchanged in its epic gold and red splendor.

An absolutely unique survivor.

And now for the very, very last place, Vicarsheim.

If we talk about tiny states with artistic architectural ambitions far beyond its resources, Vicarsheim must take the biscuit.

The state its capital had once been, Hohenloh Vikersheim, literally ended on the borders of the princely park.

But still they built themselves a palace in the finest 16th century style.

Its great hall sports a 40 meter long ceiling decorated with hunting scenes by Balthasar Katzenberger, whose skill lay more in colouring in than actual painting on the walls.

Count Wolfgang II ordered his hunting trophies to be displayed as part of plaster reliefs of the actual animals they once belonged to.

Once seen, you will never forget the Vicarsheim elephant.

In the 18th century, another count of Vicarsheim remodeled the castle again.

This time it was brought up to the latest fashions of aristocratic living, complete with a defile of rooms for him and her, and a mirror cabinet to show off their collection of Chinese porcelains.

What makes the visit so spectacular is that literally nothing had been changed inside and out since the line of Hohenlohe Weikersheim died out in 1760.

The house became a secondary residence for another branch of the family, and remained that until they had to sell it to the state of Baden Wurttemberk in 1967.

And one consequence of 200 years as a secondary residence was that the place was literally never heated in winter.

The furniture and artworks have become so used to the seasonal changes in temperature and the relative humidity that heating the castle now would result in the destruction of the decorations.

So when you visit in winter very much, keep your coat on for me.

Weichersheim epitomizes so much about Germany.

The fragmentation into so many smaller entities that led on the one hand to political insignificance, followed by overcompensation in the 19th and 20th century, but at the same time had massively enriched the country.

A place the size of Vikersheim in France or Britain would not harbour quirky works of art of the 17th and 18th century and a history all of its own.

I hope my droning on about places, gardens, cathedrals and coal mines has given you an idea of how diverse Germany is, and maybe you find something you feel you want to visit.

In case you cannot, join me on this year's History of the Germans tour and glide down the Main in Rhine river this summer.

There may be another tour in 2027.

Thanks so much to all of you for listening, supporting the show and all you do to make this work Usual service will resume on January 8th, when we will find out how Maximilian of Habsburg fared as King of the Romans.