Ingolstadt is a city of about 140,000 on the Danube in Upper Bavaria, best known internationally as the home of Audi's global headquarters. Car enthusiasts can tour the Audi Forum, but the city has more going for it than that: the Deutsches Medizinhistorisches Museum, housed in the former university anatomy theatre, is one of Germany's finest collections of medical history, and the old town contains a handsome late-Gothic Liebfrauenmünster and well-preserved sections of the original city walls. The Kreuztor, a 14th-century fortified gate, is the city's most recognizable landmark.
There's a literary footnote that tends to delight visitors: Mary Shelley set parts of Frankenstein here, at the University of Ingolstadt where Victor Frankenstein pursues his obsessive experiments. The Frankenstein connection is well documented in the Medizinhistorisches Museum, which occupies the very anatomy theatre she had in mind. The university moved to Landshut and then Munich centuries ago, but the connection lingers. The Danube waterfront makes for a pleasant riverside walk, and the Stadttheater is worth checking for performances. Ingolstadt is an easy day trip from Munich — about 75 minutes by train — and makes a satisfying alternative to the more crowded Bavarian tourist circuit.