Wernigerode, Germany: the "colourful town" of the Harz beneath its fairytale castle

The German nature writer Hermann Löns coined the nickname that has clung to Wernigerode since the end of the nineteenth century: the "colourful town of the Harz". On the market square the reason is plain - rows of half-timbered houses painted in ochre, green and deep red climb the slopes, while high on a wooded hill a romantic castle surveys the scene. A town of about 33,000 people, Wernigerode sits on the northern edge of the Harz mountains in Saxony-Anhalt, roughly 75 kilometres south-west of the state capital Magdeburg and about 150 kilometres south-east of Hanover.

Its centrepiece is the late-Gothic town hall of 1494-98, a half-timbered masterpiece with twin pointed spires and rows of carved wooden figures. Around it wind lanes of timber houses including the much-loved Crooked House (Schiefes Haus) and the tiny Smallest House, while the Krummelsche Haus shows off a façade entirely covered in carved wood.

Counts, cloth and a Hanseatic past

First mentioned in 1121 and granted town rights in 1229, Wernigerode joined the Hanseatic League in 1267 and grew prosperous on cloth weaving and the beer trade where two trade routes crossed. From 1429 it became the seat of the counts of Stolberg, later Stolberg-Wernigerode, whose hilltop residence was rebuilt in its present neo-Romantic form in 1893. The castle's furnished period rooms now trace the life of the German aristocracy, and its terraces look out over the town and the North German Plain.

Gateway to the Brocken

Wernigerode came through the Second World War with little damage, which is why its medieval streetscape survives so completely. The town is also the starting point of the Harz narrow-gauge steam railway, whose historic locomotives climb to the summit of the Brocken, the highest peak in northern Germany. With its miniature park, castle gardens and a busy Advent market, the colourful town rewards far more than a quick stop.