Stuttgart
Baden Wuerttemberg'S Capital, Built In A Vineyard Basin: The Staatsgalerie, The Wilhelma Zoo And Botanical Garden, The Porsche Museum, And The Weissenhof Estate Inscribed In 2016 As Part Of Le Corbusier'S Work · Stuttgart, Baden-Wurttemberg
Stuttgart is a working industrial city in a bowl of vineyards, and it underwhelms anyone arriving expecting a pretty German old town. Most of the centre was flattened in the war and rebuilt plainly, the main station has been a building site for years, and the sights are scattered up the slopes rather than gathered round one square. What it has instead is good: the Staatsgalerie, with old masters and a strong twentieth-century collection in a well-known postmodern extension; the Wilhelma, a zoo and botanical garden laid out inside a nineteenth-century royal villa built in Moorish style; the Porsche Museum at Zuffenhausen, with the Mercedes-Benz Museum across the city as its own entry here; the Weissenhof estate of 1927, two of whose houses joined the UNESCO list in 2016; and the Fernsehturm, the first television tower in the world built of reinforced concrete. Add vineyard terraces inside the city limits, Swabian food and the Cannstatter Volksfest.
Central Stuttgart in its bowl of vine-covered hills, from Schlossplatz to the Wilhelma and the Weissenhof estate, Stuttgart, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany
Stuttgart's streets, vineyard paths and parks are open at any hour and cost nothing. The museums follow the usual German pattern: open most days, closed one weekday, longer on one evening a week, and the state museums have run reduced or free admission schemes that change from year to year - confirm rather than trusting an old figure. The Wilhelma opens daily year-round, with the glasshouses closing earlier than the grounds in winter. The Porsche Museum closes one weekday. The Fernsehturm platform shuts in high wind, ice or thunderstorms, and the last lift up is well before closing - confirm.