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Heilbronn has two claims on history that most people haven't heard and that both deserve to be better known. In 1892, the city became the first in the world to receive electricity from a distant power station -- long-distance electric power, the technology that would eventually connect every city on earth, was first demonstrated here, from Lauffen am Neckar to the Heilbronn exhibition. The second claim is less glorious: on December 4, 1944, Allied bombing destroyed the old town in a single night, killing over 7,000 people. The city was rebuilt from rubble in the 1950s, which is why it looks the way it does today -- functional postwar architecture with isolated surviving buildings rising from it like archaeological specimens.

The Kilianskirche, the Gothic church that serves as the city's visual logo, survived and still stands in the center.

The Deutschhof, built by the Teutonic Knights in 1268, survived. The Rathaus with its Renaissance astronomical clock survived. And around them, the Neckar River flows through a landscape of vineyards -- Heilbronn is surrounded by 514 hectares of wine-growing land, the third-largest vineyard area in Württemberg, producing Trollinger, Lemberger, and Riesling from slopes that have been under vine since the Middle Ages. The wine cooperative was founded in 1888 and remains central to the city's economy and identity.