Siegen, Germany

Siegen is a city of roughly 102,000 residents on the Sieg river in North Rhine-Westphalia, first documented in 1079. The upper and lower town, established in 1259, climbs steep hills and holds Germany's densest row of 200-year-old half-timbered houses in the Obergraben district. On the 1300 Nikolaikirche tower sits the Krönchen, a golden crown from 1620 that serves as the city emblem. Iron mining drove the local economy for some 700 years, from 1224 until 1965. The painter Peter Paul Rubens, baptised here in 1577, is the focus of the Siegerland Museum, opened in 1908.