Private Nuremberg Tours: Imperial City and Rally Grounds

Where Nuremberg is, and what it holds

Nuremberg is in Germany, in the north of Bavaria, in the region called Franconia — which Franconians will tell you is not quite the same thing as Bavaria, and they are half right. It is the second city of the state, an hour from Munich by fast train, two from Frankfurt and ninety minutes by road from Rothenburg ob der Tauber — and the city advisors most often leave out of a southern Germany itinerary, on the assumption that it is a stop rather than a stay.

That is a mistake, for one reason. No other German city carries two histories of this weight inside the same square kilometre. The imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire, Albrecht Duerer and the first German railway on one side; the party rally grounds, the race laws that took the city’s name and the courtroom of the war crimes trials on the other. Neither can be quietly skipped, and the day has to be built so that one does not flatten the other.

The imperial city

The Kaiserburg stands on the sandstone ridge above the old town, and every Holy Roman Emperor between the eleventh century and the sixteenth was expected to hold court here at least once. Below it the old town is still walled — some four kilometres survive, with towers, a dry moat and the gates — and inside are the house where Duerer lived for the last twenty years of his life, the Gothic churches of St. Sebald and St. Lorenz, and the Schoener Brunnen on the market square. The Germanisches Nationalmuseum holds the largest collection of German cultural history anywhere and repays two hours on its own.

One thing to tell a client before they arrive: the old town was almost entirely destroyed in the air raids of January 1945. What they walk through was rebuilt to the medieval plan over the decades that followed, carefully and at great expense. It is not a stage set and it is not untouched either, and a guide who says that in the first ten minutes has earned the rest of the day.

The twentieth century, and where it sits

The former rally grounds lie about four kilometres south-east of the old town, around the Dutzendteich lake. Scale is the whole point and it does not photograph: the unfinished Congress Hall, the Zeppelin field with its grandstand, and the parade road running two kilometres through the middle. The documentation centre inside the Congress Hall is where a visit should start. Parts of the site have been under structural work for years, so we confirm what is open before a day is sold.

Courtroom 600 sits in the Palace of Justice, two kilometres west of the old town, and is where the trials of 1945 and 1946 were held. It is still a working courtroom. When the court is sitting, the room itself is closed and only the exhibition above it can be seen — exactly the sort of detail that ruins a carefully sold morning if nobody checked.

Putting both into one day

It can be done, and it needs discipline rather than optimism. The old town on foot is two and a half to three hours at a pace clients enjoy. The rally grounds take about two hours including the driving. Courtroom 600 takes an hour. With a car between the three that is a full day, and it works in that order: the imperial city first, the twentieth century after, and no attempt to finish on something cheerful.

Two nights is better, and Nuremberg has the hotels for it. Where a client has only half a day we ask which of the two histories they came for and build that half properly. Guiding here is licensed by the city, as in Munich, Berlin and Dresden, and the guides who handle the rally grounds well are a small group, booked early.

Christmas, sausages and gingerbread

The Christkindlesmarkt on the Hauptmarkt opens on the Friday before Advent and is the market against which every other German one is measured. It is also a day-trip target from Munich, so it is at its worst between four and seven in the evening and the hotel rates rise accordingly. Midweek, and before the offices empty, is the version worth selling.

The food is Franconian and specific. Nuremberg bratwurst are finger-sized and eaten three at a time in a roll, Lebkuchen here is a protected designation with roots in the medieval spice trade, and the beer is Franconian rather than Bavarian — a distinction the locals will happily explain at length.