Every design for Marburg

Marburg climbs out of the narrow valley of the Lahn, its old town stacked up the hillside below the Landgrafenschloss while the wooded Lahnberge rise on the other bank. Few towns fit their landscape so tightly; the streets have had to go up instead of out.

What makes Marburg feel like nowhere else is that it belongs to its students. The Philipps-Universität is the oldest surviving university founded as Protestant anywhere in the world, and it still shapes daily life, from the lecture halls in the old town to the clinics on the heights across the river. The Oberstadt, as locals call the old town, is a maze of stairways and steep lanes, and down in the valley stands the Elisabethkirche, which bears the name of Elizabeth of Hungary, who chose Marburg as her home and devoted her life to the sick. Every new year of students arrives as strangers and leaves calling the town theirs.

Whether you grew up here or arrived with a suitcase and a place at the university, you know the climb from the river to the castle step by step. The map keeps that climb, every stair and every corner of the Oberstadt.