Marbach am Neckar is a small town on the river about ten minutes north of Ludwigsburg by train, best known as the birthplace of Friedrich Schiller, born here in 1759. The compact old town sits on a rise above the Neckar, ringed by stretches of medieval wall and gateways, with steep lanes of half-timbered houses that have survived largely intact.
The house where Schiller was born, the Schillers Geburtshaus on Niklastorstraße, is now a small museum kept much as it would have looked in the mid-eighteenth century. It is an honest, modest place — a couple of low-ceilinged rooms rather than a grand shrine — and all the more affecting for it.
Marbach's bigger draw for anyone serious about German letters sits up on the hill above the town: the Deutsches Literaturarchiv and the Schiller-Nationalmuseum. The archive is one of the most important literary collections in the world, holding manuscripts from Kafka, Hesse, Rilke and countless others, while the neoclassical museum displays Schiller's manuscripts and personal effects. The adjoining Literaturmuseum der Moderne, a clean modernist box by David Chipperfield, won the Stirling Prize in 2007 and rotates exhibitions from the archive's holdings.
It makes an easy half-day from Ludwigsburg or Stuttgart: wander the walls, see the birth house, and climb to the museums for the view over the river and a dose of literary history. The town also marks the western edge of the Württemberg wine country, and there are Trollinger vineyards on the slopes nearby.