Things to do in Stuttgart

Landmark · On the southern rim of the basin

The world's first television tower built in reinforced concrete, finished in 1956 and copied everywhere afterwards.

Local tip: Get there on the Zacke, the rack railway that climbs from Marienplatz to Degerloch — it is a scheduled tram line, covered by your normal ticket, and it carries bicycles on a dedicated open wagon at the front. The view is over the whole Kessel and out to the Swabian Alb on a clear day.

Nature · Bad Cannstatt

Germany's only combined zoological and botanical garden, built as a Moorish pleasure palace for a nineteenth-century king.

Local tip: The Moorish architecture is the reason to come even if you do not care about zoos, and the magnolia grove in April is one of the oldest outside Asia. An annual pass costs little more than two visits and locals treat the grounds as a park.

Culture · Bad Cannstatt and Berg

Stuttgart sits on the largest mineral water reserves in western Europe after Budapest, and has bathed in them since the Romans.

Local tip: Mineralbad Berg and Leuze draw naturally carbonated water straight from the springs. Berg is the local one — plainer, cheaper, and full of people who have been coming for forty years. The water is genuinely fizzy against your skin, which surprises everyone the first time.

Neighborhood · The southern slopes above the centre

Streets that climb the vineyard terraces by staircase, with a beer garden on a hill in the middle of them.

Local tip: The Karlshöhe beer garden has the best free view in the city and is fifteen minutes' climb from the centre. Learn two or three Stäffele near your flat — they routinely halve a journey that looks long on a map, and they are how residents actually move around the slopes.

Food · Uhlbach, Rotenberg, Untertürkheim, Bad Cannstatt

Wine growers' temporary taverns, allowed to open only a few weeks a year, marked by a broom hung above the door.

Local tip: A Besen serves the grower's own wine and a short list of very plain food, in what is usually their barn or front room. They open in rotation and are advertised on a paper calendar the wine associations publish rather than online. This is the single most local thing in Stuttgart and visitors essentially never find it.

Nightlife · City centre and Nordbahnhof

The mainstream bar strip in the centre, and a complex of old railway sheds north of the station that houses the alternative scene.

Local tip: The 'Theo' is where the city drinks on a Saturday and is exactly what you expect. The Wagenhallen — studios, clubs and a container village in a former locomotive hall — are where the more interesting half happens, and the surrounding Rosenstein quarter is being rebuilt around them.