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The film opens with a shot of towering summer clouds in a brilliant sky, viewed from the aircraft ploughing through them and accompanied by stirring music. It cuts to a thrilling flypast of church steeples, dormered rooftops and a medieval castle on a hilltop, all quite close up. Finally, there’s a shot of the airliner itself, overflying the city, its shadow crossing neatly gridded streets before coming in to land.

It’s a thrilling visual introduction to the allure of the historic city of Nuremberg. And the source of an enduring image problem. Because this is the opening sequence from Leni Riefenstahl’s 1934 Nazi propaganda masterpiece, Triumph of the Will.

Bavaria’s second city welcomes around a million visitors a year to a city famous for its Christmas market. For a few short weeks, when the desire for an authentic yuletide experience becomes overwhelming, Nuremberg has what it takes – hot, spicy glühwein, delicious, thin Nürnberger bratwurst, melt-in-the-mouth gingerbread lebkuchen and the promise of thick snow blanketing steep, giddy, mitteleuropean roofscapes.

The rest of the year the city’s image is more problematic. A short game of word association shows what the tourist authorities are up against: Nuremberg rallies, Nuremberg laws, Nuremberg trials.

I arrived on a sultry evening, to a city doubly familiar. Familiar to an Englishman because its picturesque blend of pink sandstone and half timbering, intact city walls and neat, flower-filled hanging baskets makes it so strongly reminiscent of Chester. Familiar, too, because so much that appeared in Riefenstahl’s film is still so immediately recognisable. The castle, of course, sits on its hill as it always has: Germany’s Tower of London. The huddle of rooftops below is the same in its general effect, if subtly altered in detail, for Nuremberg suffered at the hands of allied bombing as badly as any city in Germany. The broad, banal expanse of the Nazi party rally grounds is still there, too, mouldering but immense. Close to the 19th century opera house there stands the hotel – the Deutscher Hof – outside which the crowds called for their Führer.

All credit to the city authorities, then, for having the courage to tackle the problem head on. Like a dagger thrust into the dark heart of Nazism, an uncompromisingly modern, glassy structure penetrates the ponderous and unfinished hulk of the Nazis’ Congress Hall, out in the southern suburbs where the party held its rallies.

It’s in this eye-catching structure that Nuremberg City Council has opened one of the most fascinating, and honest, museums relating to the Nazi era anywhere. Faszination und Gewalt – its name means fascination and terror – tells the story of the period from the perspective of Nuremberg and its citizens, and it does not gloss over the glamour of Nazism to Germans of the era, nor does it seek to hide the hysterical Führer worship Riefenstahl recorded. The exhibition kicks off with a film, in which Nurembergers who grew up in the period look back at their involvement from a present day perspective. So there are the old women, teenage girls then, who screamed for their leader outside the Deutscher Hof. There is the worker who marched and drilled at Nuremberg, but was the only one of his comrades to come home from war. There are the Jewish Nurembergers who somehow managed to survive the Holocaust.

Then there is the exhibition itself: an explanation of Nuremberg’s association with the Nazi party is, after all, in order. The Nazis came to Nuremberg to cloak themselves in its legitimacy as the effective capital of the Holy Roman Empire, the home for three and a half centuries of the empire’s crown jewels and the seat of its Reichstag or parliament. The Nazis first held a rally here in 1927, and as the years went by they steadily became bigger and more elaborate. Snatches of Riefenstahl’s filming exude a creepy, almost homoerotic glamour. For all the impact of the overall effect, it’s sometimes the small details of the museum that are the most telling: the newspaper announcement by a department store that it is now aryanized; the hideously anti-semitic children’s board game.

For those who seek a less troubling encounter with history there are riches aplenty in Nuremberg’s medieval fabric: the Imperial Castle, of course, but also the gorgeous Veit Stoss woodcarvings in the St Lorenzkirche, the lovely riverside ensemble of the Weinstadel with its covered bridge across the River Pegnitz, and the quiet charm of the Weissgerbergasse, Nuremberg’s best-preserved street of half timbered houses.

The museums are Nuremberg’s glory. There’s the quaint, intimate Dürer House, the home of the renaissance artist, at one extreme. At the other there’s the labyrinthine German National Museum, a German V&A or Met complete with roomfuls of peasant crafts, hangar sized spaces filled with antique musical instruments; collections of weapons, painting and sculpture, exquisite metalwork and furniture, and the world’s first globe.

That first night in Nuremberg a violent thunderstorm of Wagnerian proportions broke over the city, and for an hour and a half the storm rent the heavens, trapping me in the doorway of a dance school. Slowly, the pupils of a salsa class joined me to watch the spectacular display. The streets were awash, and cars slowed to a crawl to navigate the flooded roadway. Momentary flashes of lightening lit up the city walls as though it were suddenly daylight, and were just as suddenly gone. Speer’s cathedral of light may be but a distant, sinister memory, but Nuremberg can still put on a show.

It isn’t all sturm und drang, however. Later in my stay, as I emerged from the Fascination and Terror exhibition, emotionally stunned, I was thankful to reach the buzz and chaos of the museum’s reception area. I was greeted by the babble of dozens of school parties, the pupils good-naturedly excited at being off the leash for the day.

My attention was drawn by a lad of thirteen or fourteen, running up and down stairs, letting off steam, singing out loud to himself. He sang a familiar, and in the context comforting, anthem of the 1960s.

War – huh! What is it good for? Absolutely Nothing!’

Say it again, I thought.

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