Every design for Worms

Fancy a glass of Liebfraumilch in the town where it was born? Worms, on the left bank of the Rhine between Mainz and Ludwigshafen, wears its history lightly. People work, shop and sit outside in a town that is an industrial centre too, with chemicals and metal goods made on its edges, all within sight of one of the finest Romanesque cathedrals in Germany.

What makes Worms unlike anywhere else is how many stories overlap in one compact place. It is among the oldest cities in northern Europe and was capital of the Burgundians in the early fifth century, which is why the first part of the Nibelungenlied is set here; the Nibelungenturm and the Hagendenkmal keep the legend in the streetscape. In 1521 the Diet of Worms ended with Martin Luther declared a heretic, and the Lutherdenkmal remembers it. As one of the ShUM cities, Worms was also a centre of Jewish life in medieval Europe, and the Raschi-Haus and the Mikwe belong to sites inscribed as World Heritage in 2021.

Somewhere in the centre stand Die Großen Schuhe Luthers, a pair of shoes far too big for anyone to fill: proof that this town takes its history seriously, and with a wink.