Environs: The Palace garden of Schwetzingen and other castles

The area around Heidelberg is offering so many places of interest, it's tough to list them all in this overview. We first recommend a day trip to the city of Schwetzingen, which is about 10 kilometers away. There you can visit the lovingly restored summer residence of the electors with the beautiful gardens. The Schwetzingen palace gardens consists of the symmetrically designed French baroque garden with the Arion fountain in the center and the English landscape garden with its arced canals in planned naturalness.

If you visit Schwetzingen during the time from April to June, you can have a real royal pleasure: asparagus (Spargel)! This delicious vegetable is served in every restaurant in this area and you should really try it!

Fans of medieval fortresses and citadels will find a big variety of places to go. Near by and up the river Neckar you can visit several castles and citadels: the Dilsberg castle (Burgfeste Dilsberg) in Neckargemünd, the Schadeck castle in Neckarsteinach, the Hirschhorn castle in Hirschhorn, just to mentiona few. Going north from Heidelberg along the Bergstraße, after a few kilometers you'll see two more castles: the Schauenburg in Dossenheim and the Strahlenburg in Schriesheim.