Hitler's Nuremberg Tour (Self Guided), Nuremberg

Despite Nuremberg's storybook appearance, the city's not so distant past is rather dark. Back in 1933, amid the rise of the Third Reich, the Nazis worked really hard to leave their stamp on the city, prettifying it and renovating the architecture in a bid to accommodate their massive rallies and bombastic military parades.

In fact, no other city in Germany is more intertwined with the Nazi legacy than Nuremberg. Adolf Hitler referred to it as the City of Party Rallies, considering it the standard for German cities. The majority of Nuremberg's Third Reich sites were designed by Fuhrer's favorite architect, Albert Speer.

Foremost among them is the monumental (24.5 hectares/11 square kilometers or 12 football fields in length) Reich Party Congress Grounds, built with prisoner labor and evoking ancient Roman architecture. Its three main structures include:

The Congress Hall – intended to serve as a congress center for the Nazi Party; twice the size of the Colosseum in Rome (50,000 seats);

The Great Road – the central axis of the rally grounds and a parade road for the German Wehrmacht, intended to link the Nazi ideology with the medieval grandeur of imperial Nuremberg; and

The Zeppelin Tribune – the fortified grandstand designed as an open air altar for Hitler, an evil demagogue as he was, to deliver his anti-Semitic stump speeches. The name "Zeppelinfeld" (Zeppelin Field) refers to the fact that, in August 1909, Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin landed here one of his airships.

Nowadays, these and other former Nazi buildings serve as a reminder of the fall of the Third Reich, conserved – but not restored – for educational purposes.

If you're a WWII aficionado or history buff, take this self-guided walking tour to explore the sobering sites that once played a huge role in Nuremberg's recent history.