Rothenburg ob der Tauber: Private Tours and Day Trips

Where it is and why it survived

Rothenburg ob der Tauber sits in Franconia, in northern Bavaria, on a spur above the Tauber valley. It is roughly two hours from Munich, ninety minutes from Nuremberg and an hour from Wuerzburg, and it is the best-preserved walled medieval town in Germany. The full circuit of the wall can be walked on a covered rampart, which almost nowhere else allows.

It survived because it stopped mattering. Rothenburg was a wealthy free imperial city until the Thirty Years War ruined it, after which it was too poor to rebuild in any newer style and simply stayed as it was for three centuries. Nineteenth-century Romantic painters rediscovered it, and by 1900 it was already a destination. About forty per cent of the old town was destroyed in a single air raid in March 1945; it was rebuilt to the original plan, with donations from around the world, and the joins are hard to find.

The problem with Rothenburg, and the fix

Between about ten in the morning and four in the afternoon the town belongs to coach groups, and in summer it can be genuinely unpleasant. The fix is simple and almost no itinerary uses it: stay the night. From six in the evening the town empties, the light on the ochre and pink houses is at its best, and the Plonlein — the fork of two lanes below a half-timbered house that is the most photographed corner in Germany — is briefly yours alone.

The Night Watchman’s tour leaves the Marktplatz at eight in the evening from Easter to Christmas, runs in English, and is the rare guided walk that clients quote back word for word afterwards. It costs almost nothing and it is the single best hour in the town.

What to see

The wall walk is the first thing and takes about forty minutes at an easy pace, with views down into gardens and out over the valley. The Marktplatz has the Rathaus with its tower — a steep climb up a ladder-like final stair, rewarded with the view of the roofs everyone has seen — and the Ratstrinkstube with its clock figures.

St. Jakob’s church holds the Holy Blood Altar by Tilman Riemenschneider, carved from limewood around 1500 and left unpainted, which is the reason art historians come. The Medieval Crime Museum is better than its name and covers law rather than gore. The Kaethe Wohlfahrt Christmas shop is open all year, is enormous, and divides opinion; we ask before we include it.

Below the town, the Tauber valley has the Doppelbruecke and a walk down to the Topplerschloesschen, which almost no visitor finds.

How clients usually reach it

By car it is an hour from Wuerzburg, ninety minutes from Nuremberg, two hours from Munich and two and a half from Frankfurt. By train it is awkward: the connection requires two changes onto a branch line, and for a party of any size a private vehicle is both faster and cheaper.

The classic routing is as a stop on the Romantic Road between Wuerzburg and Fuessen, or paired with Nuremberg on the way between Munich and Frankfurt. Either way it works far better as an overnight than as a stop, and the overnight rate is modest by German standards.

Season

Late spring and early autumn are the best of it. Summer brings the coaches. The Reichsstadt-Festtage in early September fill the town with historical costume and are either a highlight or a reason to avoid the dates, depending on the client. Advent is when Rothenburg looks the way people imagine it, and the Reiterlesmarkt is one of the prettiest markets in Germany — and one of the busiest, so the overnight matters more than ever.