Tübingen, Germany

Tübingen sits on the Neckar River in Baden-Württemberg, roughly 30 kilometers south of Stuttgart, with about 92,000 residents and a first documented mention in 1078. The same year brought the construction of Hohentübingen Castle, which today holds a museum of ancient cultures displaying the 40,000-year-old Vogelherd horse carving, among the oldest known artworks in the world. The University of Tübingen, founded in 1477, enrolls roughly 28,000 students and counts 11 Nobel laureates, including Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, who discovered X-rays in 1895. The 1450 Stiftskirche ranks as the largest late-Gothic hall church in Württemberg, and poet Friedrich Hölderlin lived in the 1705 Zimmer tower from 1807 to 1843. What drew so many of these figures to one small Swabian town remains a question worth following through its streets.