Every design for Mainz

On the Rhine bank at Mainz you look straight across at the mouth of the Main, though the city's name has nothing to do with the river. It comes from Mogontiacum, the Roman fortress that Nero Claudius Drusus founded here. This is a place where belonging is easy to feel: in the carnival, second only to Cologne's in Germany, in the wine of Rhenish Hesse, and in the old rivalry with Wiesbaden across the water, which took three of Mainz's boroughs after 1945.

The Gutenberg-Museum honours Johannes Gutenberg, born in Mainz, whose printing press spread across Europe and then the world. Around it stands a city that rebuilt itself after the Second World War destroyed around half of its old town; the Holzturm and the Alte Universität belong to that cityscape too. The Drususstein recalls the city's Roman founder, the Museum für Antike Schifffahrt and the Landesmuseum Mainz carry the story further, and the Fastnachtsmuseum keeps the carnival spirit going all year.

For anyone raised in Mainz, the map is a calendar: carnival seasons, Sunday walks along the Rhine and a glass of Rhenish Hesse wine on a summer evening.