Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Why Rothenburg ob der Tauber works

Rothenburg ob der Tauber escaped the destruction that flattened so much of Germany's medieval architecture largely by economic accident — it declined into a backwater after the Thirty Years' War and simply stopped rebuilding, leaving its half-timbered houses, towers and complete circuit of city walls frozen in the 17th century. Today that stagnation is the town's entire appeal: the 2.5-kilometre wall walk offers a rooftop-level tour past watchtowers and gates, ending near the Plönlein, a fork of two streets beneath a yellow tower that's one of the most photographed corners in Germany. The Rathaus tower offers a dizzying spiral-stair climb for a rooftop panorama over the town's red-tiled roofs and the Tauber valley beyond. Käthe Wohlfahrt's year-round Christmas shop and the Reiterlesmarkt Christmas market in December lean into the fairy-tale mood the town naturally has anyway. St. Jakob's Church holds Tilman Riemenschneider's Holy Blood Altar, a late-Gothic wood carving considered one of the finest of its kind in Europe. Rothenburg gets crowded with day-trippers by midmorning, so an overnight stay — walking the empty cobbled streets after the tour buses leave — is the way to actually feel the town's scale.

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