Nuremberg

A well cut through rock inside the castle drops close to fifty metres. The guide lowers a lit candle and tips in water so you hear it land. The well room opens only at set times. Every Holy Roman emperor stayed here at least once.

A girl chosen every two years stands on the church gallery as the Christkind and opens the market. Stalls have to be wooden under red and white cloth, and glittering decoration is kept out. Mulled wine carries a deposit on the cup, refunded when it comes back.

Veit Stoss's Annunciation hangs from the vault on ropes and is uncovered only in certain seasons. The sacrament tower beside it passes twenty metres and curls at the top where it met the ceiling. Three carved men kneel under its foot. One is the sculptor.

Be in the square before the bell, because the whole thing lasts only a few minutes. At 12pm the seven prince-electors make one circle round the emperor below the clock. It was added in 1509 to mark the Golden Bull of 1356, which fixed who those electors were.

Inside the King's Gate a walled yard holds a smithy, leather workshops and goldsmiths' benches. It was built in the 1970s in the old manner, so the buildings themselves are not old.

A congress hall modelled on the Colosseum stands by the lake, never roofed and never finished. It is left unrestored on purpose, so the broken concrete shows as it is. The grandstand on the Zeppelin field can still be walked up.

Courtroom 600, where the trials opened in 1945, stopped hearing cases in 2020 and joined the permanent exhibition. Before that it opened only on days with no hearing. The back wall taken out to widen it went back in 1961, so photographs do not match it.

Durer spent his last years in this timbered house, moving in during 1509. Upstairs a press of the kind he used is worked while you watch and a sheet comes off it. At set times a guide appears as his wife Agnes and talks through the household.

A roofed wooden footbridge crosses the Pegnitz, and the executioner lived in the tower at its end. He was put out over the water so that he would not mix with the townspeople. The tower is now a small exhibition on what the job involved.

Instead of headstones the graves take flat sandstone slabs with bronze plaques bolted on. Roses are planted on every one, so in May and June the whole ground is under flower. Durer and Veit Stoss lie here too.

Founded in 1852, the biggest museum of cultural history anywhere German is spoken. The Behaim globe of 1492 is the oldest surviving globe of the Earth; it predates Columbus's return, so America is missing. A monastery cloister survives among the galleries.

A spire-shaped fountain on the main market square, raised late in the 14th century; gilded and painted figures circle it tier upon tier. A brass ring is set in its iron railing; turning it brings luck, people say, so it is polished bright.

Passages cut into the sandstone beneath the castle, used from the Middle Ages to keep beer cool and in the war as air raid shelters. Visits happen only with a guide. Even on a hot summer day the tunnels stay chilly, so carry a light layer.

The oldest parish church in the old town's northern half, keeping the relics of Sebaldus, Nuremberg's patron. The saint's bronze tomb by Peter Vischer and his sons stands on snails and small creatures at its feet, worth a close look.

White columns Dani Karavan set up in 1993 in a lane by the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, each carved with an article of the Universal Declaration in German and one other language. The city of the Nazi rallies chose that theme on purpose. Read them in passing.