Stuttgart

Twenty-five stops in a basin between hills: the Schlossplatz with the Old and New Palaces, the collegiate church, the Staatsgalerie, the city library, the Linden-Museum and Hegel's birthplace; on the slopes the television tower, the Weissenhof estate, Solitude Palace and the Wilhelma; plus the works museums of Mercedes-Benz and Porsche.

The name comes from a stud farm: a Stuotgarten is said to have been laid out here around 950, which is why a horse stands in the city arms. Stuttgart is also the only large German city that owns a winery. Some 423 hectares of vines grow inside the city limits, about two per cent of its area, mostly red; the steep terraces run right up to the housing.

The television tower on the Hoher Bopser was a world first in 1956 – the first built of reinforced concrete. The city pulled out of the financing, so the broadcaster Süddeutscher Rundfunk built it alone for 4.02 million marks, opened it on 5 February 1956 and had earned the money back in rent within a decade; after a fire-safety closure the platform reopened on 29 January 2016. Of the Weissenhof estate – built by the Werkbund in 1927 under Mies van der Rohe, 17 architects and 21 houses, and marked for demolition in 1939 – ten houses survive; the Le Corbusier semi-detached pair has been World Heritage since 2016.