Turning Back the Clock in Bavaria

It is surprising that this town, poised for military battles and scarred by natural disasters over the centuries, has settled comfortably into quaint.

The walls that surround the city were once meant to keep attacking armies at bay. Damaged by war and nature, they have become charming elevated walkways that provide excellent views of the town below.

The town hall, partly destroyed by fire in the 1500s, was rebuilt into a structure that’s now a mix of architectural styles-and a draw for tourists.

In the 1600s, the town was nearly wiped out in the Thirty Years War. Legend has it that an enemy general promised to spare Rothenburg if someone could down 3 liters of wine in one gulp. Now that scene is reenacted through mechanical figures in the town square several times a day.

Throw in an earthquake, a plague that wiped out half the population shortly after the Thirty Years War, and a World War II bombing raid, and Rothenburg would seem due for some quiet time.

And that’s exactly what we found during our stay-quaint and quiet, but not too quiet.

The Bavarian town, about 70 miles east of Heidelberg in southern Germany, sits on a gently rolling plateau above the Tauber River. It had more than enough charm to captivate my wife, Katherine, our two sons, Alex, 11, and Henry, 15, and me during our seventh annual family vacation to Europe last summer. We chose Rothenburg because I had read that it was the best-preserved medieval town in Europe, and I wanted to see whether it lived up to the billing.

Shortly after our afternoon arrival, we found our home for the next two days, Hotel Gerberhaus, on Spitalgasse, one of the city’s well-trodden streets. The 500-year-old half-timbered structure was once a tanner’s house, and in keeping with that history, animal skins cover the hallway floors.

We shared a “family room,” a nice double room to which two beds had been added. This arrangement works in many European hotels, even small ones that have a few larger rooms. In this case, our room ($87 a night with breakfast) was really too cramped for the four of us, but we didn’t spend much time there.

We began our visit with a walk to the market square.

The town’s full name, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, means “Red Castle on the Tauber,” and two castles once stood where Castle Garden is now, on a promontory outside the walls.

The town was begun about 970 when the first castle was built. The first of the disasters occurred about 400 years later, this one an earthquake that destroyed the castle and some city fortifications. After the temblor, the city began to refortify and expand.

From the square, which is more or less the center of town, you can walk a few blocks in any direction to gain access to the walls that surround the city, catching glimpses through arrow-slit holes to the outside and looking at the red-roofed beauty of Rothenburg.

Since Rothenburg became a town-it was granted a charter in 1172-it has expanded in roughly concentric layers. By 1204 the town had outgrown its first line of fortifications, and construction on additional, outer walls and towers began. These include Siebers Tower, which created the southern entrance to the town. A 14th century expansion added the “Spital” area of the city.

This was a bustling, important town with a 15th century population of 6,000. It prospered because of its location on trade routes, a thriving textile business and the fertile land and numerous villages that surround it. As the city expanded beyond earlier fortifications, much of the old construction remained. For example, if you enter through Spital Bastion, you walk a few blocks toward the center of town and pass through Siebers Tower.

The larger and more ornate houses are closest to the center of town-principally on Herrngasse and Schmiedgasse streets-while workers lived more humbly on the outskirts.

Passing through Siebers Tower we strolled up Schmiedgasse, where gift shops and pastry emporiums abounded. The buildings are taller, the street is narrower and retail charm is almost palatable here. Bakeries line their windows with an array of Schneebllen, or snowballs, a local specialty made of inch-wide strips of pastry that form a softball-size sphere. They are sold plain, dusted with powdered sugar (my favorite) or coated in caramel or chocolate.

We moved on to the market square, dominated by the town hall, or Rathaus. In this case it’s actually half a town hall; the Renaissance side was begun in 1572 to replace half of the Gothic building that burned in 1501. The Renaissance structure is linked to the part of the Gothic building that survived the fire. The older part is topped by an almost 200-foot-high tower that we decided to climb. For $1 per adult and 50 cents per child, we went to the very top for a bird’s-eye view.

The ground-floor rooms of the Rathaus displayed scenes from the Thirty Years War period as well as art, weapons and clothing. The dungeon had a guard room, three prison cells and a torture chamber decorated with the tools of the trade.

This was a harbinger of what awaited us at our next stop, the Medieval Crime Museum (Mittelalterliches Kriminalmuseum), reputedly the largest museum of its type in Europe. The punishment devices, culled from various countries, include thumb, finger and tongue screws; iron masks; a double-neck violin, a contraption to lock two feuding people together; and a baker’s baptism, a cage used to dunk bakers whose loaves were too small. Tourist reactions to the devices, used as late as the 1800s, ranged from horror to laughter.

We passed by the Doll and Toy Museum, home to 200 years of French and German dolls, on our way to Rothenburg’s best-known retail outlet, the Kthe Wohlfahrt Christmas Store, adjacent to the market square. More than 40,000 Christmas items and thousands of other gift items are on display in more than 16,000 square feet of space. Five medieval buildings have been connected to create this interior wonderland of trees, lights, nutcrackers and virtually any kind of ornament imaginable.

We emerged from the Christmas store a little before 6 p.m., with time to freshen up before dinner.

At the Goldener Rose, across the street from our hotel, Alex and I ordered the pork version of cordon bleu with fries and salad. Henry ordered wild boar with dumplings, and Katherine had fried flounder. Along with a couple of soups to start, and a few tap beers (for the adults, of course), the tab for this abundant meal was about $38.

As 8 p.m. approached, we walked back up to the city hall for the Night Watchman’s tour. Georg Baumgartner, the night watchman for the past decade, leads these tours.

About 40 of us gathered for the English-speaking version of his stroll.

“Every town needs a story,” he noted. It goes this way:

In 1631 the Protestant town was under siege by a Catholic army in the Thirty Years War and was forced to surrender in a matter of days after an explosion wiped out Rothenburg’s ammunition supply. The town’s mayor offered the victorious Gen. Johann Tserklaes Tilly a huge tankard, containing more than 3 liters of the best local wine. The general said he would spare the town if someone could empty the tankard in one gulp. Former town mayor Georg Nusch stepped forward and performed the feat, saved the town from ruin and immediately passed out for three days.

This event is immortalized on the side of the former City Councilor’s Tavern, now the tourist information office. Several times a day, when the 1683 town clock strikes the hour, two windows open. In one, a mechanical man, the mayor, lifts the tankard to his mouth; in the other, Tilly nods his approval.

As funny and appealing as the story is, it’s probably apocryphal, Baumgartner said. In reality, the women and children of the town pleaded with Tilly in 1631 and he spared the town destruction, but extracted large payments-how much is unknown-in return.

A few years later the plague killed almost half the population, and when the Thirty Years War finally ended in 1648, what had once been an important and thriving market town was in economic ruin.

In the mid-1800s, visiting artists and poets broadcast Rothenburg’s charms, and the city became famous as a picturesque glimpse into an enchanted medieval age.

In 1873 the city first became reachable by rail. The first performance of the “historical” pageant was held in 1881, and in 1898 a preservation society was formed and building rules were instituted to preserve the architecture.

Walking back into town, the Night Watchman recalled that in March 1945, during the last stages of World War II, German soldiers fleeing Nuremberg came to Rothenburg and were ordered to defend the town to the last man. Sixteen Allied planes dropped bombs on March 31, killing 39 people and destroying hundreds of homes and some of the town’s towers and walls.

U.S. Gen. John McCloy, the assistant secretary of War, knew of Rothenburg’s beauty and historic importance, and he promised the bombing would cease if citizens stopped sheltering German troops. The soldiers who had taken refuge here later surrendered. In 1948, McCloy was named Honorable Protector of Rothenburg, and in the same year the city began to rebuild the damaged parts of the walls.

The reconstruction was in keeping with Rothenburg’s historic and architectural tradition. Walking these restored sections, we saw plaques etched with the names of contributors.

Our meanderings the next afternoon started near our hotel at Spital Bastion, the city’s strongest and newest (1537-1611) fortification.

From here we climbed on the picturesque covered walls. After continuing more than halfway around the city, we climbed down on the opposite end of town, at the Klingentor tower, and caught a glimpse of adjacent St. Wolfgang’s Church, built in the late 1400s by a shepherds’ organization. Walking toward the town center, we saw Rothenburg’s main church, St. Jakob’s, which is built over a street.

After some more Christmas shopping, we went to dinner at one of Rothenburg’s most famous houses, the Baumeisterhaus (Master Builder’s House), built in 1596. The Renaissance front of this former patrician home features 14 stone window supports, about 4 feet tall, on the exterior between the windows on the second and third floors. The statues on the second floor depict the seven cardinal virtues, and those on the third floor the seven deadly sins.

It seemed appropriate to have dinner in a place where gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins, was memorialized. We dined in the interior courtyard, now covered with a glass roof, with balustrade walkways and bull’s-eye glass windows adorning the two stories above us. The atmosphere was wonderful and the dinner ($61 for four with beer) very good.

I had an onion soup appetizer that paled next to Henry’s potato soup with mushrooms and bacon. He had pork with dumplings and cabbage, and I enjoyed my creamed veal goulash with fresh mushrooms. Alex again ordered pork cordon bleu and found it even better than the previous night’s version. Katherine’s pork loin chop with mushrooms had a wonderful cream sauce.

We awoke the next morning to beautiful blue skies and decided to devote a few more hours to the town. Henry and I climbed the tower again, and when we reached the top, the sun-splashed red roofs took on a brighter hue. The tour buses had not yet arrived, so it was quiet, belying the turbulent past that gave rise to this timeless charm.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Guidebook: Reveling in Rothenburg

* Getting there: From LAX, nonstop service to Frankfurt is available on Lufthansa, and connecting service is offered on United, Air Canada, Delta, US Airways, Air France and KLM. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $885. It’s about 85 miles from Frankfurt to Rothenburg. Most major car rental companies are represented at the airport.

* Where to stay: Hotel Gerberhaus, Spitalgasse 25, 91541 Rothenburg ob der Tauber; telephone 011-49-9861- 94900, fax 011-49-9861-86555, Internet https://www.gerberhaus.rothenburg.de. Double rooms are about $50 per night with a good buffet breakfast. The Burg Hotel, Klostergasse 1-3, 91541 Rothenburg ob der Tauber; tel. 011-49-9861-94890, fax 011-49-9861-9489-40, https://www.burghotel.rothenburg.de. The Burg Hotel abuts the town walls and offers rooms in what was once part of a monastery. Double rooms begin at about $80. Several guidebooks recommend the Eisenhut Hotel, Herrngasse 3-7, 91541 Rothenburg ob der Tauber; tel. 001-49-9861-7050, fax 011-49-9861-70545, https://www.eisenhut.com. The hotel is made up of four 15th and 16th century patrician homes. Double rooms are about $150 per night without breakfast.

* Where to eat: We enjoyed our dinner at atmospheric Baumeisterhaus, Obere Schmiedgasse 3; local tel. 94700. Entrees are in the $10 to $15 range. We also dined at the simpler Goldener Rose, Spitalgasse 28; tel. 4638, which has entrees from $6.50 to $11. The Eisenhut Hotel, mentioned above, has an acclaimed, more expensive restaurant. Entrees range from $12 to $22.

* For more information: Rothenburg Tourismus Service, Marktplatz, 91541 Rothenburg ob der Tauber; tel. 011-49-9861- 40492, fax 011-49-9861-86807, https://www.rothenburg.de. German Tourist Office, 122 E. 42nd St., 52nd floor, New York, NY 10168; tel. (212) 661-7200, fax (212) 661-7174, https://www.germany-tourism.de.