Central Stuttgart on Foot: From the Schlossgarten to the Hegel House

Stuttgart's downtown is more compact than many people expect. On this tour, you'll spend a full day walking through the center without once getting on a bus or train. The stops are close together, so you'll have more time for sightseeing than for walking.

You start in the Upper Palace Garden (Oberer Schlossgarten) at the Eberhardsgruppe and then follow Königstraße to the Kleiner Schlossplatz. From there you get a good view over the heart of the city before taking a short look at the collection inside the glass-walled Kunstmuseum. After a lunch of Swabian cuisine, you head into the historic core: you'll see one of the Old Town's best-known buildings, visit the Stauffenberg memorial and the neighboring monument, and cross Karlsplatz to the Wilhelmspalais. Via the Nachtwächterbrunnen (Night Watchman Fountain), you reach Hegel's birthplace and the Tagblatt-Turm, an early modernist concrete building, in the late afternoon.

The day ends with a cocktail at a bar on the edge of downtown. The tour is a good fit for first-time visitors to Stuttgart who want a solid overview of the city's history and cityscape in a single day, without rushing from one museum to the next. The pace is moderate, and it's easy to slip in breaks.