Firmly set in the heart of Europe, the Federal Republic of Germany encompasses a huge diversity of landscapes, townscapes, and traditions. Great provincial cities like Munich or Dresden dominate their hinterlands, and local and regional identity is strong. In the centre of the country, wooded upland massifs are separated by the valleys of great rivers like the Rhine, Main, Danube, and Elbe. Northwards the landscapes and coastlines begin to resemble those of neighbouring countries, such as the Netherlands, Denmark, and the lands along the Baltic coast. To the south, the Alps forms a wonderful natural frontier. Berlin, once riven both physically and symbolically by a wall, is once again the capital of a reunified Germany, which is committed to the Europe Union but whose location also guarantees a key role in the regeneration of post-Communist Eastern Europe.

Western Germany has long been regarded as a European success story. After widespread devastation in World War II, its heritage of historic towns and cities was painstakingly restored. Shiny high-tech industrial plants have spread across the landscape, and shop fronts bulge with the products of a booming consumer society. German dynamism is symbolised by the dense traffic speeding along the country's pioneering network of autobahns. Between the thriving towns large areas of land are protected as nature reserves, and forests cover almost a third of the country. The former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) presents a rather different picture. It has a legacy of heavy, polluting industries, and its countryside is divided into monotonous large-scale state and collective farms. Many towns and villages, however, have an attractive, old-fashioned air about them, having escaped the often over-zealous modernisation practised in the west.

An unrivalled cultural heritage means that nearly every city of consequence in Germany has a first-rate artistic life, with state or civic orchestras, opera and theatre companies, and many art galleries. The country has produced an astonishing roll-call of composers, from the 18th-century patriarchs of classical music Johann Sebastian Bach, Handel, and Beethoven to the revolutionary of German opera, Richard Wagner. Philosophers such as Kant and Nietzsche and writers such as Goethe and the Brothers Grimm form part of Germany's literary tradition, which has burgeoned in the 20th century with famous names like Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht. Art groups have left their mark across the decades, from the Berliner Secessionists and the Expressionists to the angry muralists of the Berlin Wall. In Berlin, contemporary art galleries have sprung up in large numbers. Germany's pioneering record in film production, too, reads like a roll-call of world cinema: the Babelsberg Studios in the 1920s and 30s, the Expressionists Fritz Lang and FW Murnau, or the New German cinema directors such as Fassbinder and Herzog. But even though Germany is one of Europe's most modern countries, traditional culture is still in evidence. In the taverns, local notables gather round their reserved table, the Stammtisch, and countless festivals of all sizes are still celebrated with gusto, whether modestly at southern Germany's many religious processions and pilgrimages, or at mass outbreaks of jollity like the Cologne Carnival or Munich's Oktoberfest.