Tucked away in the Missouri River Valley, about an hour west of St. Louis, Hermann is a picturebook village where clock towers and steeples rise above tidy brick cottages. When church bells toll, the imagination drifts easily from the banks of Muddy Missouri to the Rhine.

Today tourism is Hermanns number-one industry. The towns natural beauty and Old-World charm attract visitors in search of the quiet pleasures of an earlier era. Numerous wineries in and around Hermann offer tasting and tours and much of downtown is a historic district where restaurants, shops, galleries, and museums have given 19th-century buildings a new lease on life.