Where to recommend in northwest Germany

Posted by mszekic on 09/06/25 07:48 PM

Hello everybody,

I'm visiting friends in the Netherlands later in the autumn near the German border. I was hoping to do a day trip into Germany and asked previously about Bonn as I studied modern German history in university and was wondering if there were many sites associated with the old West German capital still around. I didn't get much response from that, and reconsidering, it seems Bonn is a bit too far of a drive for what it has to offer. Does anybody know of any towns or any other sites of historic interest relatively close to the Dutch border and north of Cologne you would recommend? The big one I've seen so far is Dusseldorf, but it doesn't look like it has much historic to offer worth going out of one's way for.

Posted by leonard

Oregon

09/06/25 08:43 PM

437 posts

You could try Aachen, which was Emperor Charlemagne's headquarters. He is buried in tte Aachen Cathedral.

Posted by Tim

Wyckoff, NJ, USA

09/06/25 09:04 PM

8482 posts

Cologne, Dusseldorf, Monschau, Munster, Kassel. I think Munster may be the most historic. I'm sorry to have missed the Museum of Funerary Culture in Kassel, because that is so different in Germany than in the USA.

It is true that D'dorf is famous for its brewery restaurants ("Dusseldorf, the world's longest bar"), but they are rather old. I wanted to see the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf because it has had so much influence on WORLD contemporary art, as has the 10-year interval fairs in Kassel, Documenta. It is easy to combine a visit to Cologne and Dusseldorf. Despite war damage, Cologne has plenty of old stuff, including Roman relics (and a great Roman museum.) Of course it involves mythology, but read up on St. Ursula. Dusseldorf has a wonderful monthly FIsh Market, which is actually a beer and sausage based street fair along the river, you have to check if you're traveling the right .... Sunday (?) Saturday (?)

I have asked here if there are any traces of Anne in Kleve, but have not gotten a concrete answer!

Posted by Russ

Paradise

09/06/25 09:30 PM

7667 posts

Aachen could be a good choice. More than a millenium after Charlemagne, Aachen and the nearby Hürtgenwald (forest) became very important places to my father's generation of Americans as WW II was approaching its finale. I'm sure you know more about the Westwall battles than I do, so the place names at the page below will probably sound familiar to you. I've seen some small museums, bunkers and "dragons teeth" further south along the Westwall but not the Hürtgenwald. Seems like you should be able to find these types of sites there as well. There's a Hürtgen military cemetery with some 3,000 German graves. Many of the 30,000 Americans who died are at Henri-Chapelle American cemetery in Belgium, not far from the Hürtgen forest.

https://wargamecenter.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/visiting-battlefields-the-huertgen-forest-and-the-siegfried-line/