Every design for Aalen

Geologists know Aalen before they ever arrive: a whole stage of the Jurassic, the Aalenian, is named after the town, which happily calls itself a "Geologist's Mecca". Its territory spans all three groups of the South German Jurassic, from the White Jurassic in the south to the Brown beneath the town centre and the Black under part of Wasseralfingen. Aalen sits where the upper Kocher leaves the eastern Swabian Jura, with the Ellwangen Hills to the north and the Welland to the north-west.

Walk the Geologischer Pfad or stand at the Aalbäumle viewpoint and the place begins to make sense: a valley, a ring of hills and a small river, the Aal, that flows only within the town's own territory before it joins the Kocher in the centre. Below lie the half-timbered houses built between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, and the Aalener Spion keeps watch over the old town's stories, which the Haus der Stadtgeschichte tells in full.

The Limesmuseum recalls the Roman fort that stood here long before the town was founded, and the Urweltmuseum reaches back further still. A map of Aalen holds both the Romans and the rocks on a single shirt.