Strasbourg

Built mostly between the 12th and 15th centuries from local pink Vosges sandstone, Strasbourg's cathedral was the tallest building anywhere in the world from 1647 until 1874, and its single, asymmetric spire still dominates the city's skyline today. The lace-like Gothic facade, best appreciated from the small square directly in front of it, is covered in statuary; inside, the vast nave, stained glass and the famous 16th-century astronomical clock are free to visit. Victor Hugo reportedly called the building a 'gigantic and delicate marvel.'

Free to enter the cathedral itself.

Tucked inside the cathedral's south transept, this astronomical clock traces its lineage back to the 14th century, though the current mechanism and casing date mostly from an 1838-1842 rebuild by Jean-Baptiste Schwilgue. Beyond simply telling the time, it tracks planetary positions, the church calendar and lunar phases through an elaborate combination of dials, and every day at 12:30pm a set of automatons parades the 'ages of man' past a figure of Christ while a mechanical rooster crows. A short explanatory film runs beforehand (11:35am-noon) at the cathedral's south portal, and a separate, timed ticket is needed to see the show itself.

€4 adult / €2 children (6-17) / €3 students & groups of 12+; free under 6.

Once home to the city's tanners, millers and fishermen, La Petite France is Strasbourg's most photographed corner: tightly packed 16th- and 17th-century half-timbered houses lean over narrow canals of the River Ill, their upper floors historically left open for drying tanned hides. The name itself has a darker origin, referring to a hospital here that once treated syphilis ('the French disease'). Today it's full of restaurants and gift shops, but it's genuinely lovely to just wander, especially around the Rue du Bain-aux-Plantes and the old locks, and beautiful when lit in the evening.

Free to walk around - an open neighbourhood.

A short walk from the cathedral, this square is named after Johannes Gutenberg, who spent several formative years in Strasbourg developing his movable-type printing process before returning to Mainz. An 1840 statue of him, book in hand, anchors the square, which is lined by the handsome Renaissance former Chamber of Commerce and usually has a vintage-style carousel running for children. It's a natural stop between the cathedral and Petite France rather than a destination on its own.

Free

The biggest open square in the city centre, Place Kleber is named after and centred on a statue of Jean-Baptiste Kleber, a Strasbourg-born general of the French Revolutionary Wars. It's flanked by the Aubette, a striking 18th-century building whose upper floor once held a celebrated 1920s Modernist interior by Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Locals use it mainly as a meeting point and shopping-street junction year-round, but every December it becomes the emotional centre of the Christmas market, with a fir tree over 30 metres tall covered in lights.

Free

A short walk from La Petite France, Saint-Thomas has been Strasbourg's principal Lutheran church since the Reformation and is unusual architecturally as a 'hall church,' with side aisles the same height as the nave. Its centrepiece is the elaborate 18th-century mausoleum of Marshal Maurice de Saxe by sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, a dramatic piece of Rococo funerary art. The church's historic organ was played by a 17-year-old Mozart in 1778, and recitals are still held here regularly.

Free to enter; donations welcome.

Once a working-class riverside district, Krutenau is now one of Strasbourg's most lived-in, least touristy neighbourhoods, popular with students from the nearby university and known for its independent boutiques, bars and a dense cluster of casual restaurants along Rue de Zurich and Rue des Bouchers. It doesn't have a single headline sight, but it's a good place to wander for an hour if you want a break from the postcard views of the Grande Ile, especially in the evening when its bars fill up.

Free to walk around.

Built in the 1730s for the immensely wealthy Rohan family of prince-bishops, this riverside palace is grand enough that Louis XV, Marie-Antoinette and Napoleon all stayed here at various points. It now houses three separate museums under one roof and one ticket: the Musee des Beaux-Arts (European painting from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, including Giotto, Raphael and Goya), the Musee Archeologique (regional prehistory through the early Middle Ages), and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs (18th-century decorative arts and the sumptuous restored apartments of the cardinal-bishops themselves). It's easy to spend an hour just in the state apartments before even reaching the paintings.

€9 adult / €5 reduced for one museum; a combined one-day 'Pass Palais Rohan' covering all three (plus a fourth city museum) costs €20 / €15 reduced. Free under 18.

Facing the cathedral's west facade, this museum preserves original medieval and Renaissance statuary taken down from the building itself to protect it from weathering and pollution, alongside stained glass, architectural models and medieval art from the Upper Rhine region more broadly. Seeing the real, weathered originals up close - including figures from the famous facade - gives a very different sense of the cathedral's sculpture than looking up at replicas from the square below. It's compact enough to combine easily with the cathedral visit.

€9 adult / €5 reduced; free under 18. Included in the Pass Palais Rohan day pass.

Opened in 1998 in a purpose-built glass-and-stone building overlooking the Ill near the Vauban Dam, MAMCS traces modern and contemporary art from 1870 to today, with particularly strong Symbolist and early 20th-century French and German holdings alongside changing contemporary exhibitions. The building itself, with its riverside terrace, is worth the walk over even for visitors who only have time for a quick look.

€9 adult / €5 reduced; free under 18. Included in the Pass Palais Rohan day pass.

Housed in a handsome Neustadt villa, this museum is devoted to Tomi Ungerer, the Strasbourg-born illustrator, children's book author and satirist whose work ranged from beloved (if often subversive) picture books to biting political posters and adult erotic drawings. Because works on paper fade in light, the collection rotates through regularly, drawing on thousands of original drawings the artist donated to his home city, alongside a broader collection on the art of illustration internationally. A good, offbeat alternative to the Grande Ile's grander museums.

€9 adult / €5 reduced; free under 18.

Housed in the Renaissance-era former municipal slaughterhouse building (the Grande Boucherie), built in 1586-1588 and now a listed historic monument, Strasbourg's history museum tells the city's story from the Middle Ages to the present through roughly 1,650 objects drawn from a collection of some 200,000 — military uniforms and weapons, paintings, drawings, sculptures, and everyday objects donated by Strasbourg families and Alsatian institutions over generations. Its standout piece is a strikingly detailed 1:600 scale relief map of the city dated 1727, laid out across the floor of a dedicated room so visitors can walk around it and take in the entire fortified city at a glance. The museum closed for renovation for two decades and reopened in stages — first in 2007, then fully in 2013 — giving it a notably modern, well laid-out presentation compared to some of Strasbourg's older-style museums, and its central location right behind the cathedral makes it an easy add to a day exploring the old town.

€9 adult / €5 reduced

Inside a striking red-brick water tower built in 1878 to supply steam locomotives at the neighboring railway station — and listed as a historic monument since 1984 — this private, nonprofit museum holds one of Europe's largest collections of West African vodou ritual art: more than 1,200 statues, altars, fetishes, and ceremonial objects gathered over some forty years by a single collector across Benin, Togo, and Nigeria. Vodou (the source, via Haiti, of the Western term "voodoo") is a living West African religious tradition, and the museum presents its objects with real ethnographic context rather than as curiosities, tracing beliefs, rituals, and craftsmanship still practiced today. The round tower's original industrial architecture — cast-iron structure, curved brick walls — adds real atmosphere to what is already one of the more unusual and memorable museum visits in the city, a striking change of pace from Strasbourg's Alsatian half-timbering and Gothic stonework.

€14 adult / €11 reduced / €8 children

Purpose-built for children aged roughly 3 to 12, Le Vaisseau packs a whole science centre's worth of hands-on exhibits into themed zones: water experiments in 'l'Oasis,' optical illusions and light in 'la Caverne,' building challenges in 'le Chantier,' and simple coding and logic puzzles elsewhere. Regular 3D films, live science shows and workshops run throughout the day. It's some distance south of the historic centre, so it works best as a dedicated half-day outing with children rather than a quick add-on.

Check current pricing at levaisseau.com; family and child rates are offered.

Laid out in 1692 and redesigned in an English landscape style in the early 19th century, the Orangerie is Strasbourg's oldest park and a favourite spot for a break from sightseeing, with a lake, formal gardens, a small zoo enclosure and a pavilion originally built for Empress Josephine. Its best-known residents are white storks, the traditional symbol of Alsace: a conservation and breeding programme based here helped bring the bird back from near-local extinction, and today they nest on rooftops and specially built platforms around the park, often visible up close. Pedal boats are available on the lake in season, and there's a playground for younger children.

Free to enter the park; pedal boats and other activities are paid separately.

A narrow spiral staircase of 332 steps leads from the cathedral's base up to a platform at 66 metres, just below the base of the spire itself - no lift, and not for anyone with mobility issues or a fear of tight stairwells. The reward is a close-up view of the spire's stonework and a wide panorama over the terracotta rooftops of the old town, the Rhine plain, and on a clear day the Vosges mountains to the west and the Black Forest across the border in Germany.

A separate paid ticket from the main cathedral entry; check current pricing and hours at the cathedral's ticket office, as these are adjusted seasonally.

Built in 1690 by the military engineer Vauban as part of the city's fortifications, this stone dam across the Ill was designed to flood the surrounding land in case of siege. Its flat roof is now a free public terrace with the single best photo angle over La Petite France, framed by the three crenellated medieval towers of the Ponts Couverts (covered bridges) just downstream - the bridges themselves lost their wooden roofs centuries ago but kept the name. It's a five-minute stop rather than a destination, easily combined with a walk through La Petite France.

Free

After Germany annexed Alsace in 1871, the new imperial authorities built an entire planned district east of the old town - wide Haussmann-style boulevards, grand civic buildings and villas in a mix of Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Gothic and, later, Art Nouveau styles, all on a scale meant to rival Berlin or Vienna. Its centrepiece, Place de la Republique, is ringed by the domed Palais du Rhin (the former imperial governor's palace), the National and University Library, and the National Theatre. Together with the medieval Grande Ile, the Neustadt earned Strasbourg a rare double UNESCO listing as an ensemble spanning two very different eras of the city's history. It rewards an unhurried half-hour walk rather than a single stop.

Free - an open district, walk through at any time.

Strasbourg has been a seat of the European Parliament since the 1950s, and the modern glass Louise Weiss building, completed in 1999, is instantly recognisable for its cylindrical hemicycle tower. The free Parlamentarium Simone Veil visitor centre explains how the Parliament works and its impact on everyday life through interactive, multilingual exhibits, and a panoramic terrace opens seasonally (roughly late May to late September) for views over the district. Hours are shorter during the Parliament's plenary sessions (usually one week a month), so it's worth checking before visiting.

Free; ID may be requested for entry.

Batorama's glass-roofed boats loop along the River Ill from a dock right beside the Palais Rohan, giving a different, waterline perspective on the city: under the low bridges of La Petite France, past the cathedral's spire, and - on the longer routes - out along the canal to the modern European Parliament district. Commentary is available via headphones in numerous languages. The classic red circuit (about 1 hour 10 minutes) covers the most ground; shorter blue and orange circuits run 45 minutes for anyone short on time.

Red circuit (1h10): €16.20 adult, reduced rates for children by age. Shorter circuits are priced lower - check current fares at batorama.com.