Rothenburg ob der Tauber - A Bavarian Medieval Town

With the combination of spending most of the time at home due to Covid-19 restrictions and being avid travellers, my boyfriend and I really wanted/needed to get out of our apartment for a weekend. And although the boarders in Europe were open in August, the restrictions were changing all the time, so we thought it would be best to just go somewhere in Bavaria.

Looking for somewhere that offered walking trails as well as somewhere that offered something a little different than the usual city stay. We ended up in the gorgeous Northern Bavarian, medieval walled, town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Day 1

The drive from Munich is approximately 3 hours and you can opt to take the highway most of the way. We decided to do a mixture of highway and country roads. These country roads are really picturesque and are part of one of Bavaria's scenic drives called 'The Romantic Road'.

Note: In German, 'ob der Tauber' means, 'above the Tauber'. The Tauber is the river that runs below the old town.

Our hotel was in the Old Town, so on arrival we drove through a large archway built into the city wall and onto the cobble stone road. There were a few road works going on during our stay and our first attempt at getting to our hotel ended with us exiting the walled town and entering the arch way a second time 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♂️. It also didn't help that pedestrians seem to forget that cars also have access to these roads and were walking all over the place. So, do make sure you are careful when driving here. Finally arriving at our hotel, we were super lucky and got a carpark directly in front of the hotel entrance.

Note: Make sure that you check the parking signs. And, because we all know, parking signs (all over the world) seem to be the equivalent of a quadratic equation that you have to read while doing a handstand (even for native speakers), make sure you ask your hotel what the parking rules are. No one wants their car to be towed while on holiday!

We stayed at a really cute hotel called, Klosterstüble, which was built in the 1500's and is very centrally located in the Old Town. After a long search, we found that nearly all hotels in this town are very old and their photo galleries look like they haven't been updated in decades. So, if you are looking for something modern, this is not the place for you. I really liked our hotel though, I mean, the whole cute, rustic look gives this town its charm and adds to the medieval feel. It was also very clean, comfortable, and spacious. We were not too sure about the bathroom tiles though 🤣.

As mentioned, we wanted somewhere where we could do a nice walk and soak in the fading summer sun, so, we looked up walking tracks before we came and Rothenburg ob der Tauber definitley have some great walking trails on offer, ranging anywhere from 1 to 5 hours. We decided on a 2 hour walk called W6: Panoramaweg (panoramic way). Starting from our hotel, we walked through the Old Town, out the Archway we had already seen twice in the car and down a valley. The walking tracks are very well sign posted and we followed them the whole way. When we came back up from the valley, we passed a sunflower field and then were rewarded with a magnificent view of the Old Town.

Note: Plan for an early August visit here, if we had come a few weeks earlier, this would have been an even more beautiful sight with the sunflowers in full bloom.

We then continued our walk, passing by an outdoor tree climbing area, down another valley and ended at the river below the Old Town. We then made the fairly steep walk back up to the Old town and entered the castle garden just near our hotel.

A quick shower and then we set back out for dinner. We had seen this place called Rothen-Burger on our walk and it smelled and looked amazing. So, although we were in a Bavarian medieval town and we should have had a traditional Bavarian meal, we figured, we live in Munich and can get that at home. Plus, if you had have seen these burgers, you would be stopping in for a meal too.

As the sun started to go down, the weather started to get cool, fast! So, we did a quick stop to the hotel to layer up and then did a short walk along the city wall and watched the sun go down.

Day 2

I woke up early and because it was a Sunday, I knew that the streets would be quite empty. The Germans like a good restful Sunday, with most shops (except bakeries) being closed. They also have some other rules for Sundays, like no vacuuming, clothes washing, putting your rubbish in the recycle bins, etc. Essentially anything that disturbs the neighbourhood peace is not allowed. So, if you want to get some great photos (without many people) of anywhere in Germany, it is a good idea to get up early on a Sunday to do this. Here are my photos, Covid restrictions may have contributed more to it, but the town was so empty, that it made it look like a ghost town.

Daniel met me in the town square, and we grabbed some croissants and tea and then did a walk along the wall. Only passing three other people the whole time made it feel like our own personal tour. The views from the wall of the town are just beautiful and I highly recommend that you take your time to walk around the whole wall.

We stopped at the bakery again for some takeaway baguettes before packing up and hopping into the car for our journey back to Munich. All in all, this is a very lovely little town and we both really enjoyed.

What is Rothenburg ob der Tauber famous for?

As well as being a famed medieval walled town, this place is also well known for its Christmas stores that are open all year round and have the most amazing and outrageous Christmas ornaments that you can find.

This town is also famous for a sweet pastry treat called Schneeball (snowball). The original Scheeball is essentially strips of short crust pastry arranged into a loose ball, deep fried, and then dusted with icining sugar. Today you can get all different flavours of Schneeballen, the chocolate covered ones looked super decadent. I would recommend trying one from the Zuckerbäckerei (Sugar Bakery).