Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Last weekend we went to visit a cool medieval city named Rothenburg ob der Tauber, about 100 miles from Bamberg. It is one of the few remaining walled cities in Germany. There is a city wall that goes around the entire city. People live there, but it seemed like most of the businesses catered to tourists. We saw Asian tour groups, lots of German tour groups, and lots of regular tourists like us. The city wasn’t too crowded, though.

The first thing we saw on entering the city was a really cool medieval shop, with lots of swords, armor, miniatures, etc... The stuff looked really great! Carissa really wanted to get one of the swords; we don’t know where we would put it, though. We did get a really cool mirror for Carissa; the kids are convinced it’s an enchanted mirror. It makes me think of Fablehaven. We walked some of the wall, but it was too long to walk the whole thing.
When we reached the town square, we saw this very neat Baroque building, the old Rathaus, or City Hall. We climbed this tower, starting with this really neat spiral staircase, which then turned into a series of cramped, rickety old wooden staircases. I didn’t count the steps, but there were a LOT! The last hundred or so steps felt like we were climbing around in someone’s attic, and there were a few parts where I started to feel claustrophobic. At the top was a great view. Later I learned that the tower is remarkable in that it has no foundation of its own, it just rests on top of the gable!
Back down in the town square we were just in time to see the historic clock strike the hour. Four or five times a day, when the clock strikes the hour, two little windows upon up on each side of the clock to commemorate a heroic deed by a former mayor of the town in 1631. The legend says that Catholic troops had attacked and occupied Protestant Rothenburg, and were going to plunder and destroy the city. On a whim, the general promised to spare the city if the mayor could empty an enormous tankard, containing just under one gallon of wine, in just one draught. He did, and the city was spared.
Next we went to St. Jacob’s church, which took almost 200 years to build. There’s actually an underpass that goes right under the church, since the road was there before the church was. I think most Cathedrals boast some sort of relic. This one claims to have a drop of Christ’s blood. We were going to go inside, but didn’t think it was worth paying $10 just to have a look.

As we were walking toward a museum Jason was surprised by a living statue! After Jason put some money in his hat, he got down and posed for a picture with him. Eliza and Savannah didn’t want to go near him!

This is one of the few pictures we got inside the museum, since the flash on our camera decided to quit working. The story behind this odd sculpture is that the sculptor misread the directions. He was asked for a “crowned” Moses, but read it as “horned.” We can’t figure out why they decided to leave the horns on…

By this time the kids were getting a bit unruly, so we stuck them in some convenient stockades while we toured the Medieval Crime Museum. No pictures, but suffice it to say that we walked four floors covering 1000 years of European law enforcement and strange punishments, of which the stockades were probably the least strange. In 1945 the city was bombed by the allied forces. Over 40% of the city went up in flames. It was later restored through generous donations from all over the world. All in all, it was a very cool trip, we're definitely going to have to go there again sometime. There is a cool medieval festival sometime during the year.