Bruchsal looks, at first, like an ordinary mid-sized German town, with a railway junction, a shopping street and a lot of postwar buildings. This is because the old centre was largely destroyed in an air raid in March 1945, but one thing survived or was rebuilt with obsessive care: the Baroque palace. The Residenzschloss was built in the early eighteenth century for the prince-bishops of Speyer, who moved their court here from Speyer, and its great staircase, designed with help from the architect Balthasar Neumann, is considered one of the masterpieces of the German Baroque. The building was badly damaged in the war and painstakingly restored, and the staircase now stands again in a pale oval hall full of light.
Inside the palace is a museum of mechanical musical instruments, a collection of player pianos, orchestrions and music boxes that fill the rooms with sound when the guides start them up. It is a delight if you have any liking for machines that do the impossible with a roll of paper. The gardens behind the palace are a pleasant place to walk. The Bruchsal region, like Schwetzingen, grows asparagus, and the sandy soil of the plain produces vegetables in huge quantities.
Bruchsal is also a stop on the Bertha Benz Memorial Route, the road followed by the first long-distance car journey in 1888. The route here passes through the Kraichgau, running between the Rhine plain and the hills, and for riders the interest is the mixture of flat and gently rolling terrain, with views over vineyards and orchards. The roads are quiet and well surfaced, and the corners are gentle. It is a ride for a relaxed pace, with plenty of villages and small towns to explore, and the Black Forest foothills rising to the south and the Odenwald to the north.
At over forty thousand people, Bruchsal is the largest town on this stretch of the route, and everything is here: fuel at several stations, supermarkets, repair shops and restaurants. The town centre is not beautiful, but the palace and its gardens make up for it, and a bakery near the market has a good line in local pastries. Keep an eye out for Kraichgau specialities, including sausage, dumplings and wine.
The palace is at its best in late afternoon, when the low sun comes through the tall windows.