A thousand-year-old hilltop church flooded with luminous blue light from Marc Chagall's stained glass. It is the only church in all of Germany that the great artist ever agreed to fill with his windows.

A picture-perfect square of leaning half-timbered houses gathered around a Madonna fountain, tucked into the heart of the Mainz old town. It is one of the city's most photographed corners and feels like stepping straight into a storybook.

A colossus of deep red sandstone that has watched over Mainz for a thousand years. This Romanesque giant crowned German kings and remains the beating heart of the old town.

Mainz's lively market square unfolds in the shadow of the cathedral, framed by pastel facades and centred on a soaring red sandstone column. It has been the beating heart of the city for over a thousand years.

One of the world's oldest museums of printing, standing on Liebfrauenplatz just steps from the cathedral. It guards two original Gutenberg Bibles and a working reconstruction of the workshop where the modern book was born.

A slender Gothic watchtower rising from the old Rhine wall, once a city gate and a grim prison. Its most notorious inmate was the legendary bandit Schinderhannes.

A breezy riverside walkway where the old town meets the wide silver sweep of the Rhine. Named after a long vanished medieval fish gate, it is Mainz's favourite spot to watch the barges drift by.

A monumental red sandstone palace on the bank of the Rhine, glowing rose and gold in the afternoon light. Once the residence of Mainz's powerful prince electors, it is one of the last great works of German Renaissance architecture.