Wolfenbüttel is a town of books and timber. For nearly three centuries the dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel ruled from the castle here, and one of them, Duke August the Younger, built up a library in the seventeenth century that became one of the largest in Europe. The Herzog August Library still stands, and the philosopher and playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing worked in it as librarian in the eighteenth century and wrote part of his drama Nathan the Wise in the town. Its old reading rooms and the remarkable collection of illuminated manuscripts make it one of the few libraries in the world worth visiting for the building alone.
Around the library lies one of the best half-timbered old towns in Germany. More than six hundred timber-framed houses, carved with scrolls, beams and inscriptions, line the streets and canals, and they survived the war largely untouched because the town had no major industry. The Oker river splits into channels around the old centre, giving the place a gentle waterside air, and the lanes between the houses are narrow, cobbled and quiet in the morning. The castle, in the red brick and pale stone of the Renaissance, sits on its own moated island at the edge of the centre.
Wolfenbüttel is also home to one of Germany's best known herbal liqueurs, the Jägermeister, which is made in the town, and the smell of its ingredients can sometimes hang over the east side of the centre. It is a bit of local humour that the dukes' famous library and a stag-labelled digestif share a postcode.
As a food stop the town is easy and generous. It has more than fifty thousand people, so fuel stations, supermarkets and a wide range of cafés, bakeries and restaurants are all close, with tables out in the squares in summer. Local menus lean toward hearty Lower Saxon dishes, with sausage, asparagus in season and plenty of cake. Parking a motorbike near the centre is simple, though the cobbles are slippery after rain and the traffic in the old streets is slow. Give yourself an hour on foot, and aim to be there before the lunchtime crowds. The roads in and out run through flat fields, and the real riding begins after the town, as the land lifts toward the Harz.