Where to Stay in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg

What is Heidelberg known for?

Heidelberg is known for its castle and its university, a pairing that has drawn visitors and scholars for centuries. Heidelberg Castle looms in red sandstone over the old town, half ruin and half palace above the Neckar. The university is older still.

Founded in the Middle Ages, it is the oldest in Germany and shapes the life of the city, from the lecture halls to the taverns of the Altstadt. Below the castle, the Baroque old town gathers around the Church of the Holy Spirit and the long market street beside the river in Baden-Württemberg.

What are the main landmarks in Heidelberg?

The main landmarks in Heidelberg gather between the castle heights and the river. Heidelberg Castle presides over the old town in weathered red sandstone, reached by a steep climb or the funicular. Below, the sights press together.

The Church of the Holy Spirit rises over the market square, the Jesuitenkirche and the Kurpfälzisches Museum line the old streets, and the German Pharmacy Museum sits within the castle walls, while the Old Bridge leads across the Neckar toward the wooded Heiligenberg.

What is the history of Heidelberg?

Heidelberg grew up where the Neckar breaks out of the hills onto the Rhine plain, guarded by a castle on the slope above. Power settled here early. The city became the seat of the Electors Palatine, the Kurpfalz, and their court built Heidelberg Castle into one of the great Renaissance residences of the German lands.

In the Middle Ages a university was founded in the town, the oldest in Germany, and the students and scholars it drew gave the place a second and lasting character alongside the ruling court and the churches of the old town. War shaped the castle's story. In the seventeenth century the forces of Louis XIV sacked and burned Heidelberg, and lightning and time completed the damage, leaving the castle the romantic ruin that later drew poets and painters from across Europe.

The town below was rebuilt in the Baroque style that still lines its streets. Through the modern centuries Heidelberg stayed a city of learning, spared the heaviest wartime bombing that flattened its neighbours, so its old core survived intact within the Rhine-Neckar region of Baden-Württemberg, still gathered beneath the castle and along the Neckar.

Where is Heidelberg?

Heidelberg lies on the Neckar in Baden-Württemberg, at the point where the river leaves the wooded Odenwald hills and enters the flat Rhine plain. The old town runs along the south bank beneath a steep slope. The setting is a river gorge mouth.

Forested heights, the Königstuhl above the town and the Heiligenberg across the water, hem the Neckar in, and downstream the plain opens toward Mannheim and the wider Rhine-Neckar lands.

What is the climate of Heidelberg?

Heidelberg enjoys one of the mildest climates in Germany, sheltered where the Neckar valley meets the warm Rhine plain of Baden-Württemberg. Winters are gentle and short. Snow rarely lingers on the valley floor, though it dusts the Königstuhl above the town.

Summers grow warm and long, and the sheltered slopes below the castle ripen almonds and early blossom that mark the valley as one of the country's warmer corners, well ahead of the colder uplands to the east.

How do you get to Heidelberg?

Getting to Heidelberg is quick within the Rhine-Neckar region. The Hauptbahnhof sits on fast rail lines connecting the city to Mannheim, Frankfurt am Main to the north, and the wider German network. Motorways run close by.

Travellers reach Heidelberg easily from the Frankfurt airport and the autobahn spine, and local trains, trams, and buses link the station to the Altstadt beneath the castle and out to the surrounding towns of Baden-Württemberg along the Neckar.