Round Top and Festival Hill

Round Top sits on the old La Bahía Road between La Grange and Brenham. The first settlers were Anglo-Americans, the Townsend family from Florida in 1826 among them; Germans followed in the 1840s. One of them, Alwin H. Soergel, built a white house with an octagonal tower that served as the post office by 1847, and the tower gave the town its name. Some sources credit Round Top with the oldest continuous Fourth of July celebration west of the Mississippi, first held in 1851. The stone Lutheran church Adam Neuthard's congregation finished in 1867 still has its organ, carved from native cedar by Traugott Wantke. The town incorporated in 1870 and had eighty-one people in 1990, one of the smallest incorporated places in Texas.

In 1971 the pianist James Dick founded the International Festival-Institute here, modelled on Aspen and Tanglewood. Its concert hall on Festival Hill was begun in 1981 with no blueprints, only two possible outlines and the advice of the acoustician Richard Boner. A steel frame went up in 1983, air conditioning in 1985 and a permanent stage only in 1993, and local woodworkers have been adding carved panels ever since. Upstairs are a music library and a museum that holds conducting materials used by Toscanini.

The summer festival trains young musicians through June and July, and the institute presents a season from August to April. Henkel Square, at the town center, was restored by the Bybee Foundation.