Rothenburg ob der Tauber is a medieval town in Bavaria, Germany. The name of the town means "Red fortified settlement on the river Tauber". The city retains its medieval walls and largely escaped damage in World War II because of its beauty. Its castle was built in 1070, although it was settled before this. The city walls were completed in the 13th century, and they are pretty complete today. We visited the town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber for a day, and one of the items on the itenary was to walk the walls.
The city walls are about 3km long with about twenty places of interest along the route. The walls can be joined at a variety of locations. Before embarking on our long wall walk, we had lunch at one of the hotels in the town. I had chicken, which came with dumplings.
After eating, we walked through the town to join the walls. We joined at Sieve Makers' Tower and Ruckseer Tower.
The Spitaltor Gate and tower is one of the locations we visited next, and this contained a bastion and the hospital and an area where victims of the plague were housed.
Below is a view of the tower and Pig's Tower, which was the next stop.
One of the buildings could be walked around in, but it was very dark in here. We saw antique equipment and cannons. The bastion can be explored, and it covers four floors with a bridge adjoining onto the other parts of the walls. Or, you could walk below the walls.
We headed toward Lime Tower where we saw what looked like the ruins of an outdoor theatre. Along here were also plaques from visitors who visited all over the world and donated money to help maintain and restore parts of the old walls.
The next area we came to were the good views over the valley and the vineyards. Kobozeller Gate is one of the gates where you could descend into the valley.
The good views from here are pictured below.
Looking straight ahead, where the walls continue around, we could see the tower of the castle gate and the castle grounds.
We finally arrived at the old castle grounds. Most of the castle is gone, but the gate remains.
The face in the wall of the old gate had hot tar poured down it to fall on people below that they did not want here.
To continue walking around the walls, we could not access them directly as the buildings backed onto the walls directly. We walked along the street that followed the walls.
We came to the Prison Tower and Klingetor Gate.
We continued along the walls, and we had good views along the northern part of the walls. We joined again at Powder Tower, where the walls continued again.
Along this part of the walls, we also saw more plaques from people who donated to help maintain the walls, and some of these included the figure donated.
I loved walking the walls at Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and this is such a beautiful city. It took us over three hours to complete the wall walk because we did stop off and take photographs during our walk around.
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