Graz

The route hangs from a World Heritage site that arrived in two instalments: the historic centre in 1999, Schloss Eggenberg on the western edge in 2010. Its pivot is the Schlossberg, 123 metres above the main square, with a funicular since 1894; around it the cathedral, the castle, the Landhaus and the armoury.

Two set pieces are by the same hand. Giovanni Pietro de Pomis, from Lodi, began the mausoleum of Emperor Ferdinand II in 1614 and Schloss Eggenberg in 1625 for the emperor's chief minister; work on the mausoleum ran until 1714. Eggenberg is built as a calendar: 365 exterior windows, and the 52 of the piano nobile plus the eight of the Planetary Room make sixty. The Landeszeughaus, some 32,000 pieces, survives only because the Styrian estates talked Maria Theresa out of moving it to Vienna in 1749.

On the clock tower the long hand shows the hours and the short one the minutes. The cathedral carries the Landplagenbild of 1485, showing the locusts, plague and Ottoman raid of 1480 and the oldest surviving view of the city. In the parish church a 1950s window by Albert Birkle places Hitler and Mussolini among Christ's tormentors. The synagogue, burned on 9 November 1938 and demolished, was rebuilt on the same ground and opened on 9 November 2000.