Book Stuttgart attraction tickets

Few German cities wear their contradictions as comfortably as Stuttgart. It sits in a natural basin ringed by vine-covered hills, a topography that gives the city an almost amphitheatre-like quality and sets it apart immediately from the flat northern metropolises. The surrounding Swabian landscape presses right up to the city limits, so that a short tram ride can deposit a visitor among working vineyards before the afternoon is out. Stuttgart is the capital of Baden-Württemberg and the seat of some of Germany's most consequential industrial history, yet it has cultivated a cultural life, in opera, ballet, and the fine arts, that would be the envy of cities twice its size.

The city centre pivots around the Schlossplatz, a broad formal square flanked by the Neues Schloss and the Altes Schloss, the latter housing the Württemberg State Museum. The Königstrasse runs north from the square and functions as the main commercial spine, while the Bohnenviertel, the old bean quarter to the south-east, offers a denser, older grain of streets with independent shops and wine bars. Stuttgart's wine culture is genuine rather than decorative: the municipality itself is one of the largest wine-growing communities in Germany, and the local Trollinger and Lemberger reds appear on menus with the matter-of-fact confidence of a regional staple.