Every design for Bayreuth

The Bayreuth Festival, where Richard Wagner's operas are performed every year in the Festspielhaus on the Grüner Hügel, has made this town's name known around the world. Yet Bayreuth also sits in a lovely spot: a basin on the Red Main, ringed by hills, between the Fichtel Mountains and the Franconian Switzerland, with the Röhrensee as its largest lake.

People who know the town speak of its calm. The centre lies well below the surrounding ridges, and the Sophienberg rises to the south as the highest point around. The Markgräfliches Opernhaus is a World Heritage Site, and the town has been Protestant ever since its centuries as part of the Principality of Bayreuth; it only became Bavarian in 1810. Days here are spent in the Ökologisch-Botanischer Garten, in the shade by the Altes Schloss, or along the streams that thread through town, the Mistel and the Warme Steinach among them.

When the festival crowds have gone and the green hill goes quiet again, Bayreuth settles back into being simply home, a Franconian town with its own pace.