Eutin calls itself the Rose Town, and in summer you can see why, with rose beds in the market square, the park and the front gardens, but its better claim is a small, pale baroque palace on an island in a lake. The palace was the residence of the prince-bishops of Lübeck for several centuries, and it is surrounded by a moat and a landscape park that slopes down to the water of the Great Eutin Lake. In summer an open-air opera festival is staged in the palace gardens, with the lake as a backdrop, and it has done so for decades.
Eutin has a distinguished cultural connection too. The composer Carl Maria von Weber, whose Freischütz is one of the great German romantic operas, was born here in 1786, and the town remembers him with a monument and a festival. The poet and translator Johann Heinrich Voss, who gave German readers a famous version of Homer, taught at the local school, and the town became known as the Weimar of the North for its circle of writers and thinkers in the late eighteenth century. It is a lot of history for a small place with seventeen thousand people.
The market square is small and cobbled, and the streets around it have half-timbered houses, bakeries and cafés with outdoor tables. It is a place to walk slowly. As a gate to Holstein Switzerland, it also serves as the starting point for lake roads that run toward Malente, Plön and the Baltic coast. The riding nearby is gentle but constant, with smooth bends, short climbs and views through trees to the lakes. The roads are well kept and, on a weekday, mostly empty. On summer weekends the lake shores are busy with cyclists and families.
For practical needs, Eutin has plenty: fuel stations at the edge of town, supermarkets and a large choice of cafés. Parking a bike in the centre is simple, though the cobbles around the market need a cautious hand when wet. If you have an hour, walk down to the lake and look back at the palace from the water's edge. In the evening, when the opera audience arrives, the light on the water is soft and gold.