Germany
Heidelberg
Germany's oldest university town, under the sandstone ruin that taught Europe to find ruins beautiful.
Heidelberg is a compact university town on the Neckar, at the point where the river leaves the wooded Odenwald hills for the Rhine plain. Above it stands Heidelberg Castle, a red sandstone palace blown up by French troops in the 1690s and never rebuilt, which spent the following century becoming the defining image of German Romanticism. Below it, Germany's oldest university has run since 1386 and still sets the tone of the place. It is very pretty, very well known, and small enough to walk end to end.
Suggested stay
2–3 days
Language
German
Currency
EUR
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Heidelberg
The setting the Neckar swings out of steep wooded hills here, with the ruin on one bank and terraced gardens, vineyards and beech forest climbing the other.
Compact the old town is one long pedestrian street between river and hillside, so nothing needs a tram and everything is ten minutes on foot.
Student town the oldest university in the country keeps a small place young, with old duelling-fraternity taverns, a preserved student prison and full bars in term.
Romantic ruin Turner painted it, Mark Twain wrote a book around it and the Romantics made it a symbol. The half-collapsed castle is still the point.
Best time to visit
Apr-Oct
16-27° days
49.409° N, 8.695° E
UTC+2 · Europe/Berlin
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Weather & when to go to Heidelberg
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-Oct
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Heidelberg
Heidelberg is small and extremely well known, so in July and August the coach parties funnel down one pedestrian street and the castle terrace goes shoulder to shoulder. Come early or stay the night, when the day-trippers have gone. January and December are cold and grey, though December is also when the Christmas markets fill the squares and an ice rink opens below the castle.
Top things to do in Heidelberg
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Heidelberg Castle - the ruin above the town
history scenic 👍 PopularNot one building but a courtyard of them, Gothic through Renaissance to Baroque, half of it standing and half sheared open by the 1693 demolition. The Ottheinrich wing's statue-covered facade is the set piece, the cellar holds the Grosses Fass, a wine barrel the size of a room, and the German Apothecary Museum is inside. The terrace looks straight down onto the roofs and the river.
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Alte Bruecke - the Old Bridge and its brass monkey
history scenic 👍 PopularThe eighteenth-century sandstone bridge, entered through twin white towers left from its medieval predecessor. A brass monkey holding a mirror sits at the town end, rubbed shiny by everyone who has been told it guarantees a return. Retreating troops blew two arches in 1945 and the town put them back. The view from the far side is the one everybody photographs.
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Philosophenweg - the view from the far bank
scenic culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedA terraced lane along the sunny south face of the Heiligenberg, sheltered enough that figs and lemons grow on it, reached by the switchbacks of the Schlangenweg just over the bridge. Professors are supposed to have thought here. What you actually get is the castle, the bridge and the whole red-roofed town laid out below, best in late afternoon.
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Studentenkarzer and the old university - the student prison
history culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedUntil 1914 the university policed its own, and students jailed for duelling, drinking or brawling served their time in these attic cells. Being locked up became a badge of honour, and they covered every wall and ceiling with painted silhouettes, crests and self-portraits. The university museum and the great hall are in the same block, and the library nearby shows the Codex Manesse.
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Koenigstuhl - the funicular up the hill
scenic nature wildlife 👍 PopularThe Bergbahn climbs in two stages from Kornmarkt in the old town: a modern car to the castle and Molkenkur, then wooden carriages from 1907 grinding on to the summit at around 570 m. The top has a falconry, a small fairytale park and a view over the Rhine plain, with marked paths back down through the forest.
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Heiligenberg - Thingstaette and the monastery ruins
history nature wildlifeThe hill above the Philosophers' Walk carries a Celtic ringwall, the roofless ruins of the Michaelskloster, and a vast open-air amphitheatre the Nazis cut into the slope in the 1930s for mass rallies. It is a strange, quiet, mostly empty walk in beech woods, twenty minutes uphill from the terrace and almost nobody goes.
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Hauptstrasse and the Marktplatz - the old town on foot
history shoppingOne of the longest pedestrian streets in Europe runs the length of the old town, past the Marktplatz with the red sandstone Heiliggeistkirche in the middle of it. Look for the Haus zum Ritter opposite, the one Renaissance townhouse that survived the French, and the Kornmarkt square with its madonna and its castle view.
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Kurpfaelzisches Museum - Palatinate art and the Heidelberg jaw
culture arts historyA baroque townhouse on the main street holding the region's collection: Riemenschneider's carved Twelve Apostles altarpiece, paintings of the castle before and after its ruin, and a cast of the Homo heidelbergensis jawbone dug up at nearby Mauer in 1907. Small, well laid out and a good hour when the streets outside are full.
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The old taverns - Palatinate cooking and Neckar wine
foodThe student pubs in the lanes off the Marktplatz have been serving since the nineteenth century, walls covered in fraternity ribbons and carved initials. The food is Palatinate and heavy: Saumagen, liver dumplings, Dampfnudeln, plenty of pork. Drink Riesling from the Bergstrasse and the Palatinate slopes just west, which is what the region does best.
Best areas to stay in Heidelberg
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Altstadt
First-time visitors $$$Cobbled, baroque and full of visitors
Explore hotels in Altstadt →
Neuenheim
Quiet and local $$Leafy villa quarter across the river
Explore hotels in Neuenheim →
Weststadt
Value and space $$Grand Wilhelmine grid, residential and calm
Explore hotels in Weststadt →
Bergheim
Easy arrivals $$Modern, central, beside the station
Explore hotels in Bergheim →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Heidelberg
Getting to & around Heidelberg
Getting there
Fly into Frankfurt, then about an hour by direct coach or by train with a change at Mannheim.
Flight
Frankfurt Airport (FRA)
Around 90 km northwest. A direct airport coach runs to the old town and the station in roughly an hour; by rail it is a change at Mannheim, also about an hour. Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof sits west of the centre, ten minutes from the old town by tram or bus.
Train
Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof
ICE services from Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Basel, plus very frequent regional trains from Mannheim, the Rhine-Neckar rail hub twenty minutes west.
Coach
Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof
Long-distance buses stop beside the main station on routes across Germany and into France.
Drive
The A5 autobahn passes the western edge of town. The old town is largely pedestrianised, so parking means the garages cut into the hill.
Getting around
Walking
The old town is one flat street between river and hillside, and almost everything worth seeing is on it.
Free
Tram
Runs from the main station along the edge of the old town and over the river to Neuenheim and Handschuhsheim.
TBC
Bus
Bus 33 threads the old town itself, where the trams do not go, and carries on to the funicular station.
TBC
Bergbahn funicular
Two linked lines from Kornmarkt up to the castle, Molkenkur and the Koenigstuhl summit.
TBC
Cycling
Flat and easy along both riverbanks on the Neckar path. The hills behind are a different proposition.
TBC
Day trips from Heidelberg
Schwetzingen
Half dayBaroque palace gardens
The Palatine electors' summer palace, where the gardens are the real event: a formal French parterre opening into an English landscape park, with a rococo court theatre, a bath house and a mosque folly with minarets. The town is also Germany's asparagus capital in spring.
Getting there
train | bus
20 min by train or bus
Speyer
Half dayRomanesque cathedral city
The largest Romanesque church left standing anywhere, a UNESCO site whose crypt holds eight German emperors and kings. Around it sits a walkable cathedral town with a medieval gate closing the main street, a twelfth-century Jewish ritual bath and a big technology museum.
Getting there
train
40 min by train
Neckarsteinach and Hirschhorn
Full dayRiver castle country
Upstream the Neckar bends between steep wooded hills past a run of castles: four of them stacked above the small town of Neckarsteinach, and another over Hirschhorn with a terrace above the water. Slow passenger boats work the same stretch when the weather is good.
Getting there
train | ferry
30-50 min by S-Bahn, or by river boat in the warmer months
Bad Wimpfen
Full dayMedieval imperial town
A timber-framed hill town above the river, built around what was the largest imperial palace of the Hohenstaufen emperors. The arcaded hall and two watchtowers survive, the lower town keeps its salt-works history, and the whole place is quiet in a way Heidelberg no longer is.
Getting there
train
About 1 hr 20 by S-Bahn up the Neckar
A little history of Heidelberg
Heidelberg first appears in the records at the end of the twelfth century, as a castle and a market where the Neckar leaves the hills. It became the seat of the Counts Palatine of the Rhine, among the most powerful princes in the Holy Roman Empire, and in 1386 gained the university that still defines it, the oldest in Germany. Court and university together made it a Protestant intellectual centre, and the castle grew wing by wing into a Renaissance palace.
Two wars ended that. Imperial troops took the town in 1622 and carted its great library off to the Vatican; French armies burned it in 1689 and blew up the castle in 1693, after which it was rebuilt in baroque on the medieval street plan and the court left for Mannheim. The ruin was never repaired, and that turned out to be its fortune: Romantic poets, painters and tourists made the broken castle a symbol, and Heidelberg has traded on it ever since.
Heidelberg is first named in a document, as a settlement below the hill.
Ruprecht I founds the university, the oldest in Germany.
Elector Frederick V marries Elizabeth Stuart and lays out the castle's Hortus Palatinus.
Imperial troops take the town in the Thirty Years' War; the Bibliotheca Palatina goes to Rome.
French forces destroy town and castle in the War of the Palatine Succession.
The elector moves his court to Mannheim after quarrelling with the town's Protestants.
Brentano and von Arnim publish Des Knaben Wunderhorn here; the ruin becomes a Romantic emblem.
Retreating troops blow the Old Bridge, but the town escapes bombing and the US Army makes it a headquarters.
The American garrison closes after nearly seventy years.
Know before you go
Payment
Cards & cash mixed
English
Widely spoken
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / F
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+49
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
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FAQs about Heidelberg
▸ When is the best time to visit Heidelberg?
April to October, with May, June and September the pick: long evenings, the river terraces open and the hill walks at their best. July and August are the busiest by a distance. December is cold and grey, but it is Christmas market season, which is the one strong reason to come in winter.
▸ How many days do you need in Heidelberg?
Two. One day covers the castle, the old town and the Philosophers' Walk at a brisk pace; a second lets you ride the funicular to the summit, do the university quarter properly and eat without queuing. Add a third only if you want Speyer or the Neckar castles.
▸ Is Heidelberg worth doing as a day trip from Frankfurt?
It works, and thousands do it, but it hands you the town at its worst hour. Heidelberg empties in the early evening, and that is when the old town is genuinely lovely rather than merely photogenic. One night changes the visit completely.
▸ Do you have to walk up to the castle?
No. The Bergbahn funicular runs from Kornmarkt in the old town to the castle terrace and on to the summit. If you would rather walk, a stepped path beside it takes about ten minutes; it is steep but short, and coming down is easy.
▸ Is Heidelberg a good base for the region?
Yes. It sits on the edge of the Rhine-Neckar area, with Mannheim twenty minutes away, Speyer and Schwetzingen inside an hour, and Frankfurt or Strasbourg reachable and back in a day. The Neckar valley and the Odenwald hills start at the edge of town.
▸ Is English widely spoken in Heidelberg?
Very. It is a university and research town with a large international student and scientific population, and it had American forces stationed here for decades. Hotel, museum and restaurant staff switch to English without pausing, though a few words of German still land well.
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