Kaiserslautern, Germany

Kaiserslautern sits in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, where roughly 100,000 residents live along the Lauter inside the 770-square-kilometer Palatinate Forest Nature Park. The city earned its nickname "Barbarossatown" after Emperor Frederick I built an imperial palace here in 1152, and visitors can still walk the eleventh-century Kaiserpfalz ruins, which include a great hall dated to that year. The 1918 Pfalzgalerie art museum holds 10,000 paintings, while Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences, founded in 1971, enrolls about 6,000 students. The 1920 Fritz Walter Stadium seats 49,327 and hosted 2006 World Cup matches as the home of 1. FC Kaiserslautern.