Frankfurt

For more than 400 years, the most powerful rulers in central Europe were chosen in Frankfurt. A 1356 document called the Golden Bull made the city the official place to elect the Holy Roman Emperor, and from 1562 the emperors were crowned here too.

So this riverside town spent centuries as a kingmaker. Today it plays a similar role, with money instead of crowns.

Frankfurt took its name from the Franks, who crossed the river Main at a shallow ford around 1,500 years ago. The settlement grew into a trading hub, hosting fairs from the 1200s and opening a stock exchange in 1585 that still runs today.

Its most famous son was the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, born here in 1749. His childhood home stood in the old town until the war.

In 1848, Frankfurt tried to make a different kind of history. Germany's first freely elected parliament met in St. Paul's Church to build a single democratic nation. The attempt collapsed the next year, but it became a founding symbol of German democracy.

Then came the bombs. Frankfurt had the largest medieval old town in Germany, a dense maze of half-timbered houses. On the night of March 22, 1944, British bombers set it ablaze, and the historic center burned in hours.

The city rebuilt as Germany's financial capital. It's home to the European Central Bank, which runs the euro, and a cluster of skyscrapers so un-German that locals call it "Mainhattan."

Stand on the Römerberg, the rebuilt medieval square, and look at the Römer, the old town hall where emperors feasted after their coronations. Step into the red sandstone cathedral where those emperors were elected.

Ride up the Main Tower for a view over the skyline and the river. Then cross to the Sachsenhausen district for Apfelwein, the tart local apple wine, poured from a stoneware jug into a ribbed glass.