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Erfurt wears its medieval skyline the way other cities wear their postwar reconstruction -- as an identity. Called the Thuringian Rome for the density of its church towers and spires, the city has one of the best-preserved medieval centers in all of Germany, which is partly luck and partly the accident of having been in East Germany long enough that no one had the money or ambition to modernize it into drabness. Walk the Krämerbrücke -- a medieval bridge lined with half-timbered houses and shops, one of the rarest surviving examples of an inhabited bridge in Europe -- and you are walking through something essentially unchanged since the 14th century.

Martin Luther arrived as a student in 1501 and lived at the Augustinian monastery from 1505 until 1511.

The monastery still stands; you can visit his cell. Luther entered the monastery after a thunderstorm nearly killed him in 1505, a crisis of faith that Erfurt's university life had been quietly preparing him for. The university, founded in 1392 and once one of Germany's most important, closed in 1816 and was not refounded until 1994. The Old Synagogue, built in 1094, is the oldest surviving synagogue in Europe and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2023 alongside the city's Jewish medieval heritage. In the 15th century Erfurt had one of the largest and most prosperous Jewish communities north of the Alps.