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 the Muddy Missouri to the Rhine.

Today tourism is Hermann’s number-one industry. The town’s 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.