Monschau, Germany

Monschau is a town of roughly 11,000 residents in the Eifel, about 30 km south of Aachen, first documented in 1198 as "Montjoie." Its half-timbered medieval Old Town sits in a narrow Rur river gorge and has survived seven centuries almost unchanged, with the Rotes Haus standing as the finest cloth-merchant's mansion. The 1895 Mustard Mill still grinds mustard using an 1814 stone mill, and the 13th-century Monschau Castle ruins host open-air theatre every summer. The textile mills that opened around 1850 shifted to tourism in the 1960s, leaving a town where the industrial past waits just behind the half-timbered facades.