Münster's centre is compact and very walkable — or cyclable, which is how most people here move. The Dom (St Paulus Cathedral) dominates the old town and houses a notable treasury and the extraordinary 1540 astronomical clock, which performs at noon each day. The Rathaus on the Prinzipalmarkt is one of the finest civic buildings in Westphalia — it was here that the Peace of Westphalia was signed in 1648, ending the Thirty Years' War, and the Friedenssaal where it happened is open to visitors. The nearby Schloss is worth a look from the outside for its Baroque façade.
St Lambert's Church, a short walk from the Rathaus, is unmistakable: three iron cages hang from its tower, placed there in 1536 to display the corpses of the executed Anabaptist leaders who had seized the city a year earlier. The cages are still there.
The LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur holds the city's main art collection, with fine late Gothic Westphalian works alongside 20th-century Expressionism. The Stadtmuseum covers local history and is free to enter, as is the LWL-Museum für Naturkunde (natural history, with a mammoth skeleton). The Pablo Picasso Museum specialises in graphic art. For outdoor time, the Aasee lake southwest of the centre is where Münster relaxes.
For a change of pace, rent a bicycle and do a circuit of the Promenade ring — the tree-lined boulevard on the old city walls that encircles the entire old town — then head out into the flat Münsterland countryside, one of the best cycling regions in Germany.