Marburg, Germany

Marburg is a town of roughly 78,000 residents on the Lahn River in Hesse, Germany, first mentioned in records dating to 1138. The 11th-century Landgrave Castle stands on a 287-metre hill overlooking the medieval Old Town below. Founded in 1527, the Philipps-University of Marburg is the oldest Protestant university in the world, and its students account for about twelve percent of the population. Saint Elizabeth of Hungary built a hospital here in the early thirteenth century, and her 1235 canonisation turned the town into a pilgrimage destination. The same year saw the completion of the Saint Elizabeth Church, the oldest Gothic hall church in Germany, while Emil von Behring later received the first Nobel Prize in Medicine here in 1901.