Geoff & Rita's 2010 Europe Tour: Road to Rothenburg, June 18-20, 2010

Left Nuernberg for the 2.5 hour drive to Rothenburg on the very efficient and quick moving autobahn (highway) system. We were traveling at an average speed of 130 kph and the only vehicles we passed were trucks and busses. Everything else passed us. Just outside of Rothenburg the cloudy skies cleared and we entered Germany’s largest medieval walled town in glorious sunshine. Our TomTom guided us to the front door of our hotel, checked in, parked our car at the back of the hotel against the medieval wall and started touring.

Rothenburg is Germany’s best preserved medieval walled town. Its heyday was from 1150 to 1400 when it was one of Germany's most important and largest cities with a population of about 6,000. Most of the buildings were built by 1400 and have been lovingly restored to keep the medieval feel to the walled city. You can walk most of the city wall (about 3km) which we did and it gives excellent views of the city. The Town Hall was built in the 13th century and is still the tallest building with a 200 foot tower. Part of the Town Hall was destroyed by fire and replaced with a Renaissance style structure in 1570. Rita and I climbed the 214 narrow and steep steps to the top of the tower for some great views.

Rothenburg receives about 2.5 millions visitors a year with only 500,000 staying overnight so the best time to walk around the town is after 5:00pm when all the tour busses and day trippers leave. We were very happy that we decided to overnight here as the town is very quiet at night.

Looking back after entering the Old Town gate