The old town of Heidelberg and the castle above it make a fine starting point for luxury car rental with Zeus Prestige. We deliver to your hotel, to a private address of your choosing and to Mannheim City Airport (MHG) or Frankfurt Airport (FRA) nearby. Rent or hire a convertible or a supercar, or add a luxury SUV for the longer runs, and explore the Odenwald, the Rhine plain and the Neckar valley at your own pace.
The records mention Heidelberg for the first time in 1196, and the castle that dominates the skyline began to rise in the thirteenth century. Built of red sandstone about 100 metres above the river, it served the Electors Palatine, who resided in the city until 1720. French troops damaged it in 1689 and 1693, and lightning struck it in 1764. The ruin still shelters the Heidelberg Tun of 1751, one of the largest wine barrels in the world.
The university, founded in 1386 by Rupert I and chartered by Pope Urban VI, is the oldest in Germany. Between 1778 and 1914 students served minor sentences in the Karzer, the student prison behind the Old University. The Old Bridge crosses the Neckar below the castle in stone laid between 1786 and 1788 under Elector Karl Theodor, after earlier wooden bridges fell to flood, ice and fire.
On the north bank the Philosophers' Walk runs about two kilometres along the slope of the Heiligenberg, a path that nineteenth-century professors strolled and that gave it its name. A fossil jawbone around half a million years old turned up near the city in 1907. The Neckar leaves the Odenwald here for the Rhine plain, which sends forest roads, palace gardens and imperial towns in different directions from the old town.
Open the roof for the flat, easy road across the Rhine plain to Schwetzingen, where the palace gardens still follow their original design and hide a theatre, a mosque and a bath house among the lawns. Speyer comes next. Emperor Conrad II began its cathedral in 1030, and it was consecrated in 1061. It is the largest surviving Romanesque church, it joined the UNESCO list in 1981, and four Salian emperors are buried there. The air smells of clipped hedges and warm stone. Stand by the Rhine, then drift back with the sun in the mirrors.
A supercar wakes up on the climb to the Königstuhl, the 567-metre hill above the old town. The road winds up through forest to the summit, where the Landessternwarte, an observatory established in 1898, looks out over the Neckar. Forest roads then run north-east into the Odenwald toward the Felsberg, where large rock formations tumble down the hillside. The breath shortens on the steep hairpins as the trees flash past the windows, and the engine note swells with each climb.
Bad Wimpfen, above the Neckar south-east of Heidelberg, rewards an unhurried grand tourer. Its Staufer palace is the largest preserved in Europe north of the Alps, and Barbarossa, Heinrich VI and Friedrich II all held court there in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Half-timbered houses gather around the old town. On the way back, Burg Guttenberg keeps a castle museum and the Deutsche Greifenwarte, a falconry centre with flight demonstrations. Warm leather and a low engine murmur make the road home effortless.
Yes. The old town, the hotels and private addresses throughout Heidelberg are all covered, so just name the spot when you book.
Yes. Mannheim City Airport (MHG) in the neighbouring city is covered, including its private aviation terminal (ICAO EDFM), and Frankfurt Airport (FRA) is covered too for long-haul arrivals.
Go open-top for Schwetzingen and Speyer, take a supercar to the Königstuhl and the Odenwald, and choose a grand tourer for Bad Wimpfen and longer journeys.
Mannheim lies just across the Rhine plain to the west, Frankfurt to the north, Stuttgart to the south-east and Karlsruhe to the south-west.
Yes. The Odenwald, the Rhine plain and the Neckar valley all meet at the city, and the motorways run on to Frankfurt, Stuttgart and the Black Forest.
Choose from our cabriolets, supercars, SUVs and exotics, tell us where in Heidelberg to deliver, and the keys will be ready for your luxury car hire.