Landshut is one of Bavaria's best day trips from Munich: close enough by train to be easy, but far enough from the main tourist circuit to feel like its own place. The old town sits in a bend of the Isar, with pastel facades, long market streets, and the huge brick tower of St Martin's Church rising over the roofs.
The city was founded by the Wittelsbach dukes in the early 13th century, and that ducal past still gives Landshut its shape. Trausnitz Castle watches from the hill above town, while the City Residence brings an Italian Renaissance note to the medieval streets below. The centre escaped much of the destruction that remade other German cities after 1945, so the old town still works as a walk rather than a reconstruction.
Landshut is most famous for the Landshut Wedding, a huge re-enactment of the 1475 marriage between Duke George the Rich and Hedwig Jagiellon of Poland. It only happens every four years, but the story suits the city even between festival years: Landshut is at its best when you read it as a living stage set, with real shops, cafes, and civic life running through the old stonework.