Bonn

Bonn was the capital of West Germany for forty-one years and the birthplace of Beethoven, and it sits thirty minutes upriver from Cologne — close enough that most clients can add it without moving hotels.

The private excursion in this archive covers both halves of the city. Beethoven’s birth house on the Bonngasse holds the largest collection of his manuscripts and instruments anywhere; the government quarter along the Rhine, with the former chancellery and the Haus der Geschichte, explains the post-war republic better than any museum in Berlin manages to.

The afternoon moves into the Siebengebirge, the volcanic hills on the east bank: the rack railway up the Drachenfels, the view over the Rhine that drew the whole Romantic movement to this stretch of the river, and Schloss Drachenburg below the summit. In the right season it is the best short walk in the Rhineland and the reason to give the day a full afternoon rather than a photo stop.

The day runs privately with a licensed guide and a chauffeured vehicle, starting and ending at your clients’ hotel in Cologne, Duesseldorf or Bonn. It combines well with a private Rhine boat cruise on the way back.