Every design for Bonn

Would you guess that a city this relaxed was once the capital of West Germany? Bonn sits on both banks of the Rhine, south of Cologne, and today it feels more like a university town with an unusually international neighbour list than a seat of power.

Many who lived here remember it through small, everyday scenes: students cycling past the Poppelsdorfer Schloss, a market morning by the Altes Rathaus and the Marktbrunnen, carnival days when the local Bönnsch Platt is heard from young and old. Others recall the years of the Bonn Republic, which the Palais Schaumburg and the Ehemaliger Deutscher Bundestag still bring to mind. Bonn still hosts six federal ministries and twenty United Nations institutions, the most in Germany, and Deutsche Post DHL and Deutsche Telekom have their headquarters here.

And then there is Beethoven, who was born in Bonn and is remembered in the Beethoven-Haus, one of the city's best-loved sights. If Bonn is where you studied, worked or grew up, you already know its quiet charm – now you can carry it around.