Wuppertal

Wuppertal resists easy summary. It runs for roughly twenty kilometres along the narrow, winding valley of the Wupper — a river that gives the city its rhythm and its signature, the Schwebebahn, a suspended railway from 1901 that still glides over the water today. The city was stitched together in 1929 from several independent towns, and their distinct centres — Elberfeld in the west, Barmen in the east — still feel like separate places a tram ride apart.

Its character is built on textiles, engineering and a quiet tradition of progressive culture: Friedrich Engels was born here, Pina Bausch's Tanztheater made the city a byword in contemporary dance, and the Von der Heydt-Museum holds one of Germany's great nineteenth-century collections. Between the old industrial brick and the surrounding forested hills — never more than a short walk from anywhere — Wuppertal is cheaper, greener and more characterful than its bigger Rhineland neighbours.

Wuppertal makes more sense once you picture the valley. The city is long and thin, and the Schwebebahn traces the river as its spine — so the simplest question isn't "which side of town" but "which point along the valley."

At the western-central core is Elberfeld, the urban, cultural heart. A tram ride east, Barmen keeps its own centre of gravity, as a former independent city should. The ground rises north and south into forested hills and the villa streets of the Briller Viertel above Elberfeld. And at the far western end, the Schwebebahn loops around Vohwinkel, half a town in its own right. Because nowhere is far from the hills or the railway, the choice here is about character and pace, not commute.