Heidelberg Audio Tours

Heidelberg Castle was destroyed by French forces in 1693 during the War of the Palatinate Succession. It was partially rebuilt, then struck by lightning in 1764, and the restoration was abandoned. The ruin that resulted became, in the early nineteenth century, one of the defining images of German Romanticism: red sandstone towers against dark forest, half the walls still standing, the interior a formal garden. Turner painted it, Mark Twain wrote about it at length and with characteristic sideways humour. The ruin has been drawing visitors for two hundred and fifty years and shows no sign of stopping.

The University of Heidelberg was founded in 1386 by Rupert I, making it Germany's oldest.

About a quarter of the city's 160,000 inhabitants are students, which gives Heidelberg an energy that its Romantic reputation does not always advertise. The Hauptstrasse, the main pedestrian street running the length of the old town, is over a kilometre long and is one of the longest pedestrian zones in Europe. The Church of the Holy Spirit (Heiliggeistkirche) at the market square was shared between Catholics and Protestants simultaneously for over a century, divided by a curtain hung down the centre of the nave.