A Bustling City Protected Against 20th-Century Influences

After several intense and exhilarating days of glaciers, hovering peaks and hikes at 4,000 meters, my husband and I were feeling visually and emotionally drained.

That was how we discovered the area around this small, well-preserved medieval city on the Rhine north of Zurich.

If the Alps are like the Rockies to Americans, then the canton of Schaffhausen is Vermont. The architecture that is so fascinating and detailed is more than 400 years old.

The canton of Schaffhausen is the northernmost in Switzerland, almost surrounded by Germany and the southernmost reaches of the Black Forest.

Several castles overlook the river valley, and three miles downriver is Europe’s biggest waterfall, the Rhine Falls.

The river, picturesque villages and rolling countryside provide a memorable setting. The trees turn New England colors in the fall.

In October, several villages in the canton celebrate the harvest with traditional wine festivals. People hike the low hills and ski cross country all winter on the numerous trails that wind through the forests and vineyards, then return to cozy fires in heavy beamed rooms.

We began our investigations in the old part of the city after a 40-minute train ride from Zurich.

Industry Hidden

Schaffhausen, population 34,000, proclaims itself an industrial city, and high-tech manufacturing plants and generating stations do exist. Mercifully, they are sited discreetly and impose little upon the landscape.

We got our bearings at the 400-year-old Munot fortress, whose circular keep was based on a design attributed to German Renaissance artist Albrecht Durer. The fortress, in which a watchman and his family still live, dominates the town. From it we could look over the river and the old tile roofs onto parts of the original town walls that flank the fortress.

The bustling city below is an architectural prize. City officials have taken steps to preserve the architecture and street patterns from undue 20th-Century influences. They have banned cars in one section and approved special lighting that blends with the old facades.

You can see a different life here in contrast to Alpine Switzerland, where the towns, attractive as they are, have generally been given over to tourism.

Down steep paths from the Munot, we entered the car-free part of town by the Swabian Gate, which is complete with clock tower and the inscription: “Blockhead, open your eyes.”

You can’t let the upscale shops, interesting as they might be, distract you from the abundance of detail on these stucco or timber-framed buildings.

Dragon-Shaped Spouts

Vividly painted oriel windows, nearly 180 of them, have been meticulously restored. Copper gargoyles, dragon-shaped drain spouts, wrought-iron signs, sculptured designs and lively and elaborate scenes, all symbolic of the original family’s profession, aspirations or status, decorate the buildings.

We saw a wine maker’s house that displayed a tangle of painted grapevines and a prosperous merchant’s fresco that told a tale of Greek heroes.

Clocks, everywhere in Switzerland, are sometimes simple sundials here. Their faces are painted on buildings and their gnomons are fashioned from wrought iron.

Twelve guild houses, embellished with symbols of their respective trades, remain in town as does the Romanesque All Saints Cathedral, built in the 11th Century.

The cathedral was stripped of its “Popish” decoration during the Reformation, as were most Swiss Protestant churches that were formerly Catholic. Nevertheless, it has a light-filled stark beauty, grander but not unlike that of New England churches.

Throughout Schaffhausen, whose name means “sheep houses,” we came upon signs with a dark ram displaying golden horns, hoofs and private parts. This is the canton’s symbol.

According to local historians, Pope Julius II, in the 16th Century, was deeply indebted to the citizens of Schaffhausen who had protected him from his enemies. As repayment he bestowed upon them the privilege of using gold in these places on their symbol.

Different Kind of Beauty

We cruised the Rhine in the afternoon. The Rhine steamers continually ply the river between the city of Schaffhausen and the Untersee, or Lower Lake, of Lake Constance from mid-April through October. The trip takes about two hours.

At Schaffhausen the Rhine is approachable. It is no longer the Alpine torrent that it is when it rises in the Grisons.

It glides smoothly here between low banks growing deciduous trees that turn bright colors in the fall. Climbing up from the river are fields of corn, potatoes, rye, wheat and rape, a grain grown here chiefly for its oil. Schaffhausen is the biggest German-speaking wine district in Switzerland, and vines of the Pinot Noir cover many of the slopes.

Here and there a village, with its ever-present clock tower, interrupts the vegetation. Diessenhofen, for example, sits at one end of a covered bridge that crosses the Rhine.

The crescent-shaped Stein am Rhein, at the mouth of the Untersee, is well preserved, with a modern roadway tracing the moat of the medieval walls, now destroyed. Many of its buildings are adorned with allegorical frescoes. Some have reddish-brown paint on their timber framing that mimics the color of the original oxblood coating.

Banana-shaped boats, the local transportation of choice, are tied up in continuous moorings along the banks of the river. These traditional wooden boats have remained popular here because of the requirements of the vigilant Swiss army, in which every able-bodied man serves for 30 years. Wood is less detectable by radar in the event of an invasion.

Largest Waterfall

The Rhine steamers don’t go to the falls. To see them, we found vantage points within an hour’s walk (or a few minutes’ drive) downriver from Schaffhausen.

The Rhine Falls are no Niagara. Only 70 feet high, they are like the river--approachable. Unless it is late June or early July, when the Alpine runoff increases the flow to dangerous levels, you can take a boat to an eroding rock that divides the froth and climb to the top amid the roar and the spray.

View of the Falls

My favorite view of the falls, especially at night when they are lit, is from the Schlossi Worth, one of the restaurants just below the Rhine Falls on the river. The plaza where the Schlossi Worth is set is somewhat touristy, the view is splendid and the food is good, especially the river perch. It has the added benefit of moderate price.

We took our last lunch in Schaffhausen five kilometers north of the city on the terrace of the Schloss Taverne Herblingen. This castle is high over a deep valley, overlooking the plains on the banks of the Rhine.

A country that provides nuclear shelters for 75% of its population doesn’t neglect its everyday lodgings. Schaffhausen’s hotels, like others in Switzerland, are predictably clean and usually family-run.

We slept in a four-poster complete with down puff in the romantic Hotel Alte Rheinmuhle, whose address is in Germany, 8238 Busingen; the per-person rates are $98 to $135 U.S.

In a country setting on the Rhine, this 300-year-old former mill’s rooms also are furnished with a lovely collection of armoires. One of its well-regarded and fairly high-priced restaurant’s specialties is lamb grilled over grapevine wood.

Elegant Accommodations

The most elegant hotel in the region is the little Fischerzunft at Rhienquai 8 in Schaffhausen ($135 to $240 per person). It, too, is on the Rhine, in the former quarters of the Fishermen’s Guild. This hotel’s restaurant is one of the most widely acclaimed in Switzerland.

The imaginative owner/chef mixes French and Chinese cuisine. Dining here is comparable to eating in a two- or three-star (Michelin) restaurant in France.

Another somewhat less expensive hotel with a beautiful location is the Hotel Rheinfels in the village of Stein am Rhein. Room rates are about $72 to $128, and the hotel has a moderately priced restaurant and old creaky floors that have been refurbished and polished.

For more information, contact the Swiss National Tourist Office, 250 Stockton St., San Francisco 94108.