Ulm

Deep in the limestone valleys of the Ach and Lone rivers, six caves have yielded the oldest figurative art humanity has ever created — flutes carved from bird bone and mammoth ivory, the lion-headed ‘Löwenmensch’, and delicate female figurines dating back 40,000 years. Standing at the entrance of Hohle Fels or Geißenklösterle, the air cool and scented with damp stone, you confront the dawn of symbolic thought. The UNESCO site is not a single monument but a landscape of discovery: the caves themselves, often just rock shelters tucked into forested cliffs, and the museums in Blaubeuren and Ulm that display the artefacts in context. The Urgeschichtliche Museum in Blaubeuren is a masterpiece of curation — the Venus of Hohle Fels rests in a darkened rotunda, the bone flutes are played on audio loops, and stratigraphic walls show the layers of Neanderthal and modern human occupation. It is palaeontology made poetic.

Piercing the Swabian sky at 161.5 metres, the steeple of Ulm Minster remains the tallest church tower on earth — a Gothic needle so slender it seems to have been spun from air rather than hewn from sandstone. Begun in 1377 and completed only in 1890, the Münster embodies six centuries of civic ambition. Step inside the vast, column-free nave to find a hushed forest of light filtered through 15th-century stained glass, then ascend the 768 steps to the viewing platform. The climb rewards you with a panorama that stretches from the Danube’s ribbon to the Alpine foothills on a clear day. Below, the medieval Fischerviertel (Fishermen’s Quarter) clusters half-timbered houses along narrow canals, preserving the town’s artisan soul.