Wernigerode calls itself the colourful town of the Harz, and it earns the name: the market square is lined with half-timbered houses painted in warm reds, yellows and greens, with carved beams and crooked upper storeys that lean slightly toward each other. The town hall, built in the fifteenth century, has two slim towers like a fairy-tale building, and the whole place feels as though it had been arranged for a picture book. With about thirty-four thousand inhabitants, it is a lively town with a real life of its own, not simply a museum.
Above it all stands the castle, a Romantic fantasy of turrets and pinnacles on a hillside that was rebuilt in the nineteenth century by the Counts of Stolberg-Wernigerode as a residence in the neo-Gothic style. It is reached by a steep path or a little tourist train, and the view from its terrace over the red roofs and wooded hills is wide. Down in the lanes, a famous curiosity is the Smallest House, a narrow building less than three metres wide, which was squeezed between two larger neighbours in the eighteenth century.
For railway lovers, the narrow-gauge Harz railways start here. Old steam locomotives pull trains through the forest to the Brocken, the Harz's highest mountain, in a slow climb of about an hour and a half, and the sight and sound of a steam engine in the spruce forest is hard to resist. A ride on the train, rather than the bike, is a pleasant way to see the mountain.
The riding in the area is a pleasure. Roads wind up through spruce forest toward the high Harz, past the Drei Annen Hohne station and the open moors, and in autumn, mist fills the valleys. The old town is cobbled, and the lanes are narrow, so it is best to park outside and walk in. In summer, the market square is full of people eating ice cream under umbrellas.
Fuel and food are easy, with several stations on the ring road and a wide choice of cafes and restaurants in the centre. Try a slice of Harzer cheese or a plate of venison with dumplings in one of the old inns.