Der SchwarzwaldBaden-Baden to the Bodensee.

The Schwarzwaldhochstraße (Black Forest High Road, B500) was designated Germany's first Ferienstraße (holiday road) in 1927 — a scenic route running along the watershed ridge of the northern Black Forest between 700 and 1,000 metres, through pine and spruce forest, over open Hochmoor (raised bog) heathland, and past a series of viewpoints overlooking the Rhine plain west toward Alsace and the Vosges. The road was built for tourism, not for military purposes — a purely civilian infrastructure investment in the Weimar period that anticipated the leisure driving culture of the post-war era. In October the heathland turns amber and gold.

The highest summit in the northern Black Forest at 1,163 metres — a broad, open moorland plateau with a radar installation (former French military, now meteorological) and an unmarked walking trail to the summit trig point. The view west on a clear day: the Rhine plain spread below, the silver line of the Rhine itself, Strasbourg Cathedral visible on good days, and the Vosges mountains on the French side as a blue wall. The plateau is covered in Hochmoor (raised bog) vegetation — cotton grass, cranberry, sundew — with characteristic twisted dwarf pines surviving the winter winds.

Freudenstadt was founded in 1599 by Duke Friedrich I of Württemberg on a Renaissance grid plan — a purpose-built planned town with the Marktplatz (market square) at its centre. The town was almost entirely destroyed in April 1945 by French forces advancing into the Black Forest (a controversial act of retaliation that killed civilians) and rebuilt between 1945 and 1954 on the original plan. The result: a strange beauty — a Renaissance street grid rebuilt in 1950s German modernism, with the Marktplatz remaining the largest in Germany at 216 × 216 metres. The L-shaped church (the town church, designed so that men and women could pray separately without seeing each other) survived and is one of the most curious ecclesiastical buildings in Germany.

The highest waterfalls in Germany — the Gutach river drops 163 metres in seven cascades through dense spruce forest above the town of Triberg. The falls are most impressive in spring (April–May) when snowmelt swells the volume, and in winter when they partially freeze and form ice curtains over the rock faces. A paved path climbs through the forest alongside the cascades from the lower entrance to the highest viewpoint — approximately 1.5km and 200m of ascent. The entry fee is charged at a turnstile at the bottom; the forest path and the sound of water are genuinely spectacular even in summer when the flow reduces.

The Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Black Forest gateau) in its authentic form is not the fluorescent cherry-cream confection found in supermarkets. The genuine article requires: chocolate sponge layers soaked in Kirschwasser (cherry schnapps distilled from Black Forest sour cherries — legally required by the Baden-Württemberg food regulations for a cake bearing the Schwarzwälder name), whipped cream, sour cherries, and chocolate shavings. The Kirschwasser content (minimum 40% ABV) is specified in German food law — a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte without sufficient Kirschwasser cannot legally be labelled as one. Café Schäfer in Triberg has made the definitive version since 1926.

The German Clock Museum in Furtwangen holds the world's largest collection of Black Forest clocks — from the earliest wooden-wheeled movements of the 18th century through the cuckoo clock tradition (invented in the Black Forest around 1730, though the exact inventor is disputed) to modern precision instruments. Understanding the clock's evolution here — from peasant woodcarvers making simple shelf clocks in winter to the industrialised production of the 19th century — makes buying a handmade clock from a workshop afterwards a completely different act. A genuine handmade Black Forest cuckoo clock costs €150–800; the €20 version is made in China.

The Feldberg at 1,493 metres is the highest peak in the Black Forest and the highest summit in Germany outside the Alps and the Zugspitze massif — the highest point accessible without technical climbing between the Alps and Scandinavia in Germany's latitude band. On clear days the summit view extends to Mont Blanc and the Bernese Oberland Alps to the south, to the Vosges across the Rhine to the west, and across the Black Forest plateau to the north. A herd of red deer (Rothirsch) grazes the upper slopes and is visible most mornings before 09:00. The summit is reached by cable car (Feldbergbahn) or a 45-minute walking trail.

The Freiburg Münster (Minster) is the finest medieval church in the Black Forest region and one of the most important Gothic cathedrals in Germany — notable above all for its tower (116m), the only medieval Gothic tower in Germany to have been completed in the Middle Ages rather than finished in the 19th-century Gothic Revival. The art historian Jakob Burckhardt called it "the most beautiful tower on earth." A daily market operates on the Münsterplatz surrounding the cathedral — fresh produce, regional Badisch food, flowers. The tower can be climbed for the best view of Freiburg and, on clear days, the Black Forest and Vosges.

The largest city on the German shore of Lake Constance — with a medieval old town intact because of a specific act of civic ingenuity in WWII. Konstanz sits on the Swiss border; as Allied bombing intensified in 1944–1945, the city council left all the city lights on at night, making Konstanz indistinguishable from the Swiss cities across the border. Allied bombers, forbidden from targeting neutral Switzerland, left Konstanz unharmed. The medieval town centre (the Council of Constance held the most important Church council of the 15th century here, burning the Czech reformer Jan Hus at the stake in 1415) is consequently intact and walkable.

The Bodensee (Lake Constance) is the third-largest freshwater lake in Central Europe — 63km long, 14km wide, shared between Germany (Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg), Austria (Vorarlberg) and Switzerland (Thurgau, St. Gallen, Schaffhausen). The water is alpine snowmelt from the Rhine catchment, cold and exceptionally clear. Ferries connect the German, Austrian and Swiss shores; a single day ticket allows circumnavigation. In summer the water temperature reaches 22–24°C and the German shore beaches are crowded. The island of Mainau (the "flower island") and the island of Reichenau (UNESCO World Heritage, Carolingian monasteries) are both reachable by ferry from Konstanz.