Step into the Alte Aula, the assembly hall of Heidelberg's Old University, and you'd swear you were in the Renaissance. You wouldn't be. The building around it is Baroque, raised in the early 1700s. The hall's oak panelling and galleries arrived in 1886.

The reason was a birthday. The university, founded by Elector Ruprecht I in 1386, was turning 500, and architect Josef Durm gave its ceremonial hall a makeover to match. Portraits and scenes from the university's past went up on the walls. Concerts and lectures still fill the room today.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tour of Historic Heidelberg stops outside the building and places it in Germany's oldest university story: Ruprecht's charter, graduates from Robert Schumann to Hannah Arendt, and the book-burning memorial at the New University.