In the city of Dinkelsbühl, in the district of Ansbach, in Bavaria, Germany

 "We live in a wondrous time in which the strong is weak because of his moral scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity."

-- Otto von Bismarck
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(in the district of Ansbach, in Bavaria, Germany) The city of Dinkelsbühl, a former imperial city, is an important tourist resort on the Romantic Road -- due to the exceptionally well-preserved late medieval townscape. Since 1998, Dinkelsbühl has been a large district town and since 2013 a member of the Bavarian Association of Cities; it is described as the "most beautiful old town in Germany," in a slogan slogan with which the city advertises its tourism efforts.

+ Located near the border with Baden-Württemberg, Dinkelsbühl lies on the Wörnitz river (about 20 miles [30 km] southwest of Ansbach) in the southeast of the Frankenhöhe, which belongs to the Keuper Plateau in the southwest German strata between the Main and Danube rivers. Pushed to the west by a castle sandstone hilltop to the east of today's course, the Wörnitz formed a flat, triangular valley basin, which is almost completely filled by the Old Town. In the northwest and southeast, the city wall runs along the morphological edge of the bubble sandstone, which forms a plateau beyond the city moat between the valley cuts of two streams flowing into the Wörnitz from the west. In the northern valley incision, in which the bladder sandstone was washed away down to the underlying Lehrberg layers, flows the Sauwasenbach, which through its alluvial sands created a ford that is still visible today at low tide, which (allegedly) was an incentive for the founding of a village at this location. In the east, the Old Town is bordered by the Mühlgraben, a straightened arm of the Wörnitz, beyond which the Wörnitzvorstadt is still to be counted as part of the Dinkelsbühl Old Town area.

+ Mentioned in 928, Dinkelsbühl was fortified in the 10th century and became a free imperial city in 1273. It flourished in the 14th and 15th centuries and successfully withstood eight sieges in the Thirty Years’ War (events commemorated annually in a July festival) before it fell to Gustav II Adolf of Sweden in 1632. The 10th-century walls, along with a moat and 12th-century towers, still surround the city, thus preserving its medieval character and providing one basis for a thriving tourist trade. Notable landmarks include the late Gothic Church of St. George (1448–99; one of Germany’s finest single-naved churches, with a Romanesque tower), the old castle of the Teutonic Order (rebuilt 1761–64), the fortified town mill, and the Deutsche Haus (a 14th–15th-century mansion, with a Renaissance facade).