The Thirty Years' War: Prague to Westphalia

On 23 May 1618, Protestant estates at Prague Castle threw two royal governors and their secretary out of a window. The three men fell about 21 metres from the third floor and survived; Catholics credited angels or the Virgin Mary, while Protestant pamphleteers later said they landed on a dung heap. The defenestration triggered the Bohemian Revolt and led directly to the Thirty Years' War. Prague Castle is now the official residence and workplace of the Czech president, and most of its areas are open to tourists.

Visitor guidance: Most of the castle areas are open to tourists.

On 8 November 1620, Frederick V's army under Christian of Anhalt took position on the White Mountain outside Prague — actually a low plateau — and was broken in about an hour. Some 4,000 Protestants were killed or captured; Imperial losses were about 700. Frederick fled the country and was mocked as the Winter King. The hill's 381-metre summit is now a grassy park with a small mound raised in 1920, for the battle's 300th anniversary.

Visitor guidance: The hill is in Prague's Bílá Hora district, with the mound on the open summit.

After White Mountain, 27 leaders of the Bohemian Revolt were executed in the Old Town Square on 21 June 1621. Twelve heads were packed into iron baskets and fixed to the Old Town Bridge Tower, where they stayed until the Saxon invasion of 1631. The square still carries the memory: 27 crosses set into the pavement, installed during post-war repairs to the Old Town Hall, with a plaque naming all the victims. Above them rise the Gothic Church of Our Lady before Týn and the medieval astronomical clock on the Old Town Hall.

Visitor guidance: The crosses lie in the pavement in front of the Old Town Hall.

Magdeburg was besieged from 20 March 1631 and stormed on 20 May by 40,000 of Tilly's Imperial troops. Fire spread through the city and destroyed 1,700 of its 1,900 buildings. Of 25,000 inhabitants only 5,000 survived; at least 1,000 had fled into the cathedral, and Tilly sent soldiers to save it. The killing made "magdeburgization" a byword for total destruction. The cathedral, built over 300 years from 1209 with its steeples finished in 1520, still stands: 120 metres long, its towers about 100 metres high.

Visitor guidance: The cathedral stands in the centre of Magdeburg.

On 17 September 1631, outside Breitenfeld near Leipzig, a combined Swedish-Saxon army met Tilly's Imperial and Catholic League troops. The Saxon troops were routed first, but Gustavus Adolphus regrouped and counterattacked until Tilly's army collapsed. The Catholics lost two-thirds of their men in a few days and suffered their first major defeat in 13 years, opening southern Germany to the Swedes. Breitenfeld is now part of Leipzig, and a monument to Gustav Adolf, erected in 1831 for the battle's 200th anniversary, stands in the village.

Visitor guidance: The monument stands in Breitenfeld, now part of Leipzig.

Gustavus Adolphus was killed at Lützen on 16 November 1632, in a Swedish victory over Wallenstein that cost about 6,000 Swedish and 5,160 Imperial casualties. He was shot three times and fell from his horse; his body was recovered only after the fighting ended. A granite boulder, the Schwedenstein, was placed where he fell. Schinkel designed the iron canopy over it, erected in 1837, and a chapel followed in 1906–07. The memorial stands just outside Lützen, about 10 km southwest of Leipzig.

Visitor guidance: The Gustav Adolf memorial is just outside Lützen, about 10 km southwest of Leipzig.

Over two days, 5–6 September 1634, an Imperial-Spanish army under the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand and Ferdinand of Hungary crushed the Swedish-German force of Gustav Horn and Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar south of Nördlingen. The Swedes attacked and were thrown back; the retreat became a rout. Losses ran to 12,000–14,000 against 3,500, and Horn was taken prisoner. The defeat drove Sweden from Bavaria and led to the Peace of Prague in 1635. Nördlingen still has its complete city walls, one of very few German towns to keep them.

Location precision: The fighting moved across the hills two kilometres south of the town; the pin marks Nördlingen and its intact walls.

Visitor guidance: Nördlingen's complete city walls still ring the old town; the battlefield hills lie south of it.

The Peace of Westphalia was not one treaty but two, signed in October 1648 in Münster and Osnabrück. Talks were split because each side wanted to meet on territory under its own control, and 109 delegations arrived over the years. In strictly Catholic Münster, the Emperor negotiated with France, and the Treaty of Münster was signed there. The Gothic town hall's council chamber, the Hall of Peace, is the room to see; badly damaged in the Second World War, the building was rebuilt in 1950–58 and recorded over 120,000 visitors in 2012. In 2015 the EU gave the town halls of Münster and Osnabrück the European Heritage Seal.

Visitor guidance: The town hall is on the Prinzipalmarkt in Münster's centre.

The other half of the peace was signed in Osnabrück, where Sweden, the Emperor and the imperial estates negotiated from 1643 to 1648. The late-Gothic town hall, built from 1487 to 1512, holds the Hall of Peace, its walls lined with portraits of the 42 European envoys. The bronze handle of the entrance door carries the year 1648 and a dove. Severely damaged by Allied bombing in 1944, the hall was restored and reopened on 24 October 1948, just before the peace's 300th anniversary; upstairs, a model shows Osnabrück as it looked in 1633.

Visitor guidance: The town hall stands on Osnabrück's market square.