Things to do in Bonn

Culture · Bonngasse, Altstadt

The house where Beethoven was born in 1770, now a museum and research centre holding the world's largest Beethoven collection.

Local tip: The digital studio in the basement lets you hear works on period instruments, and it is the part most visitors skip. Time a visit near the Beethovenfest in late summer, when the whole city programmes around him and tickets for the smaller venues are still gettable.

Landmark · Along the Rhine, south of the centre

The former parliamentary quarter — the old Bundestag, the Langer Eugen tower and Haus Carstanjen — reused since the 1990s to house around 25 UN organisations.

Local tip: Walk the Rhine path from the Kennedybrücke south and you pass the old parliament, the chancellery and the tower in about half an hour. The Weg der Demokratie signage explains what each building was, and it is the only place in Germany where you can read the whole postwar story off the buildings in one walk.

Nature · Between the Bundesviertel and Bad Godesberg

A 160-hectare riverside park laid out for the 1979 federal garden show, with a lake, a Japanese garden and long open meadows.

Local tip: The flea market on the Rheinaue is one of the largest in Germany and runs through the warmer months — go early. On summer evenings the meadows fill with barbecues and the whole city seems to be there, which is exactly what a park in a small city should do.

Neighborhood · Heerstraße and Breite Straße

A grid of 19th-century streets north of the centre whose ornamental cherries form pink tunnels for about two weeks each spring.

Local tip: It runs from late March to around mid-April and the peak lasts days, not weeks — follow the city's own blossom page rather than guessing. Go on a weekday at eight in the morning; by Saturday afternoon the street is impassable and the residents have long since stopped finding it charming.

Food · Sterntorbrücke, city centre

Bonn's own top-fermented beer, brewed in the city and served in a dimpled glass with a handle rather than Cologne's tall thin one.

Local tip: The glass is the point — it is unmistakably not a Kölsch stange, and that is a deliberate small act of independence from the city twenty minutes downriver. Order the Bönnsch and the Rhenish sauerbraten together and you have had the local meal.

Culture · Adenauerallee, Museumsmeile

A natural history museum where the Parlamentarischer Rat convened in September 1948 to draft Germany's Basic Law — under the stuffed giraffes, which were screened off for the occasion.

Local tip: Almost no visitor knows that West Germany's constitution was drafted in a zoology museum, and the museum has never quite let go of it. Go for the African savannah hall, stay for the small exhibition about 1948; it is the strangest and best fifteen minutes on the Museumsmeile.