Weilburg, Germany

Weilburg sits on a horseshoe bend of the Lahn River in Hesse, where roughly 13,000 residents live in a town first documented in 906. Weilburg Castle, built in 1535, served as the residence of the Counts of Nassau-Weilburg, whose direct descendants now rule Luxembourg. The castle grounds include a 1705 Neoclassical orangery and a 1713 baroque terrace that together form a 1.4-hectare riverside park, while the 1765 Schlosskirche holds an organ built by the Brothers Riemer in 1784. A railway tunnel from 1848 runs beneath the Schlossberg as Germany's second-oldest, and the Tiergarten zoo, founded in 1690, ranks as the oldest menagerie in Hesse. How these layers of history fit onto one river bend is what draws visitors upstream.