Regensburg's Stone Bridge Still Crosses the Danube

The stone arches in front of you belong to the Steinerne Brücke, Regensburg's Stone Bridge, and beyond them the two spires of the cathedral rise over the roofs. We are standing at the south end of the bridge, beside the last remaining bridge tower, at the start of this walk: eight outdoor stops, about two kilometres, from the Danube through the UNESCO old town to the former abbey of St Emmeram, now the palace of the Princes of Thurn und Taxis. The city dates the building of the bridge to the years 1135 to 1146. The master mason is unknown. For almost eight hundred years, until 1935, this was the only reliable crossing of the Danube in Regensburg and for a long way up and down the river. A city survey gives the length today as about 315 metres, with fifteen arches still visible. There were originally sixteen; the first arch was built over when the salt warehouse, the Salzstadel, went up beside us in the sixteenth century. That warehouse now holds the UNESCO World Heritage visitor centre. The Old Town of Regensburg with Stadtamhof was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2006. Three towers once guarded the bridge. Only this one, the Brückturm on the city side, is still standing. If it is open, you can climb it for a view over the river and the roofs; there is a small museum inside, and the hours are posted at the door or at the Tourist Information in the Old Town Hall. At the crest of the bridge sits a small stone figure, the Bruckmandl, looking toward the cathedral. A local legend says he is the bridge builder, checking how high the cathedral towers have grown, because he had bet the cathedral master which work would be finished first. The dates rule the story out as history: this bridge was complete in 1146, and work on the present cathedral began only in 1275. Just downstream of the tower, hard against the old wall, is the Historische Wurstkuchl. A cookshop stood here by the harbour crane for a very long time; the present house dates from the mid-seventeenth century, and the same family has run the kitchen since the early nineteenth. The sausages are the local ones, short and fine, served with mustard and sauerkraut. In the last days of the Second World War four of the arches were blown; they were later rebuilt. The deck is now for walkers and cyclists only. When you are ready, leave the river and walk east along Unter den Schwibbögen, a few minutes at most. Our next stop is the Porta Praetoria, the north gate of the Roman legionary fortress, whose great ashlar blocks are built into the wall of the bishop's court.

The great ashlar blocks in the wall in front of you belong to the Porta Praetoria, the north gate of the Roman legionary fortress Castra Regina. We are standing in the street called Unter den Schwibbögen, looking at what remains of the gate, now built into the north side of the bishop's court, the Bischofshof. A stone inscription, found more than a century ago and kept today in the city's Historical Museum, records that the emperor Marcus Aurelius had a circuit of walls, gates and towers built here for the Third Italic Legion. The city dates that foundation to the year 179. The place took its name from the river Regen, which joins the Danube just east of here: Castra Regina, the fortress at the Regen, the origin of the name Regensburg. The camp was a large rectangular fortress and held a legion of some six thousand men. This gate faced north, toward the Danube and the frontier. Together with the Porta Nigra in Trier, the Porta Praetoria is one of the two Roman gate buildings north of the Alps that still stand in recognisable form. In the Middle Ages the old Roman camp street was built over, and much of the fortress wall was reused as a quarry for patrician houses. This gate survived because it was absorbed into the bishop's court. A brewery was later built on top of it; when that brewery came down in 1885, the Roman arch came back into view. The remains rise about eleven metres above the present street. The original towers would have stood more than twenty metres high. Since a restoration in 2016 and 2017 you can also see the gate from the inside, through the small exhibit called document Porta Praetoria, entered from the rear of the upper room. Access from the street here is free. When you are ready, walk south, around the bishop's court, onto the Domplatz. In two or three minutes you will be facing the west front of the cathedral. Our next stop is the Dom St. Peter.

The two openwork spires in front of you belong to the Dom St. Peter, the cathedral of the Diocese of Regensburg. We are standing on the Domplatz, looking at the west front. The towers are 105 metres high. They were not always so: for some three and a half centuries they ended in low pyramid roofs, just above the nave. A church of St Peter is recorded here from the late eighth century. After a fire in 1273, work on the present Gothic cathedral began in 1275 or 1276, in the French manner. The interior was roofed and in use from the middle of the fifteenth century. Building then stalled, around 1520, in a period of economic decline and religious change. The spires were added only between 1859 and 1869, under Bishop Ignatius von Senestrey, with money from King Ludwig I, King Maximilian II and a collection across the diocese known as the Peter's Pence. The architect was Franz Josef von Denzinger. With the transept gables and a roof turret, the cathedral was finished in 1872. If you go inside, look up at the coloured glass. The diocese dates most of the medieval windows between the early thirteenth and the late fourteenth century, and a large part of that glass is still in place. At the western crossing piers stand Mary and the Laughing Angel, carved around 1280 by the sculptor known as Master Ludwig. The silver high altar, made by Augsburg goldsmiths, was assembled between 1695 and 1785. In the north transept hangs the Rieger organ of 2009, which the diocese describes as the world's largest free-hanging organ. The cathedral choir, the Regensburger Domspatzen, still sings here. The cathedral is usually open from 6:30 in the morning; it closes at 17:00 in winter, 18:00 in April, May and October, and 19:00 from June to September. There is no sightseeing during services, and on Sundays and holidays the interior can be visited only from 13:00 until closing. Entry is free. A step-free entrance is at the north-east corner, by the Eselsturm, the Donkey Tower, a remnant of an earlier Romanesque church. On the square stands an equestrian statue of King Ludwig I. It was unveiled here in 1902; the sculptor was Ferdinand von Miller the Younger. When you are ready, walk south-west, down Residenzstraße or through the Krauterermarkt, to Neupfarrplatz. It is only a few minutes. Our next stop is the square that occupies the site of Regensburg's medieval Jewish quarter.

The open square in front of you is the Neupfarrplatz, in the middle of the UNESCO old town. The church in the centre is the Neupfarrkirche. The ground you are standing on was, for more than five hundred years, Regensburg's Jewish quarter. Jewish life in Regensburg is first recorded in a document of 981. Around the year 1000 a quarter stood here; the Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte calls that the earliest written reference to a Jewish quarter in Central Europe. The community had a synagogue, a ritual bath, a Talmud school that drew students from far away, its own seal and its own judges. Some thirty to forty houses stood on this ground, and around five hundred Jewish residents lived here. After the death of Emperor Maximilian I, who had been the community's protector, the city council decided on 21 February 1519 to expel the Jewish residents. The synagogue and almost all the houses were destroyed. Excavations between 1995 and 1998 uncovered the complete ground plan of the synagogue that was destroyed in 1519. In 2005 the Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan laid that plan out in white concrete as the memorial you can see on the square, called Misrach, a Hebrew word for east, or a place of radiance. The word is inscribed where the Torah ark once stood. Under the square, the document Neupfarrplatz shows the archaeology on guided visits; tickets and times are at the Tourist Information in the Old Town Hall. After the destruction, a pilgrimage chapel was begun on the site of the synagogue. From 1542 the unfinished church became the first parish church of the city after it turned Protestant. That is the Neupfarrkirche in front of you. When you are ready, walk north-west, toward the Kohlenmarkt and the Rathausplatz. In four or five minutes you will be in front of the Old Town Hall. Our next stop is the Altes Rathaus, where the Perpetual Imperial Diet sat from 1663 to 1806.

The building in front of you is the Altes Rathaus, the Old Town Hall of the former Free Imperial City of Regensburg. We are standing on the Rathausplatz, looking at the facade, the tower, and the late Gothic portal. Regensburg became a Free Imperial City in 1245, with its own mayor and council, and the town hall grew from that date. The oldest part is the tower, which the city's tourism office gives as 55 metres high. Around 1320 or 1330 the great hall was added, first as a festival hall, later famous as the Reichssaal. If you count the windows toward the hall, you will see that they run in groups of four, except in the last bay before the portal, where only three remain: the portal, built a little later, blocked the fourth window from the outside. Above the doorway stand two armed figures, known as Schutz and Trutz, for defence and defiance. They stand for the city's right to protect itself. The arms of Regensburg, two crossed silver keys on red, the keys of St Peter, appear several times on the facade. From 1663 to 1806 the Perpetual Imperial Diet, the Immerwährender Reichstag, sat in this building. It was the permanent assembly of the Holy Roman Empire. The emperor and the imperial estates, usually through envoys, negotiated taxes, law, alliances and war. Three colleges had to agree: the electors, the princes and the cities. The Diet had met in Regensburg regularly since 1594; in 1663 it simply stopped being dissolved. In 1806 both the Diet and the Empire ended here. You can visit the Reichssaal and the adjoining rooms on a guided tour, the document Reichstag, which is also offered in English. In the cellar is the Fragstatt, the former interrogation room of the city court, shown on the same visits. Tickets and times are at the Tourist Information, just here at Rathausplatz 4. When you are ready, walk west, only a couple of minutes, onto Haidplatz. Our next stop is one of the oldest squares in the city, where emperors lodged during the Diet.

The triangular square in front of you is the Haidplatz, one of the oldest open spaces in Regensburg. It began as a long meadow, a Heide, west of the Roman fortress wall, and later became a place for markets, festivals and tournaments. The city's tourism office says the jousts here could draw up to three hundred riders, with spectators, traders and entertainers coming in from far outside the town. The baroque fountain in the middle is the Justitiabrunnen, the Fountain of Justice. The tall house with the oriel, on the north-west side, is the Goldenes Kreuz, today a café and hotel. During the Perpetual Imperial Diet it was a well-known inn for emperors and kings. Charles V stayed here. Later guests, according to the tourism office, included King Ludwig I of Bavaria and Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. The same office tells the story that Don Juan de Austria, the son of Charles V and Barbara Blomberg, a girdler's daughter from Regensburg, was conceived in the tower of this house. A statue of Don Juan stands on Zieroldsplatz, just off the Old Town Hall. Next to the Goldenes Kreuz is the Thon-Dittmer-Palais. The Dittmer family were among the city's most successful merchants in the eighteenth century. The house has a Renaissance courtyard that is often open, and in summer it is used for concerts and plays. Looking back toward the cathedral towers, the red building is the Neue Waag, which housed the city scales from the Middle Ages, and a councillors' drinking room. In 1541 Philipp Melanchthon and Johannes Eck met in its tower for religious talks, in an attempt to find common ground between the confessions. When you are ready, walk east and a little south, into Wahlenstraße, which the city calls the oldest named street in Regensburg. In two or three minutes you will be standing under one of the tallest surviving patrician towers. Our next stop is the Goldener Turm.

The church and the long palace front on this square belong to St. Emmeram, once a Benedictine imperial abbey and today the residence of the Princes of Thurn und Taxis. We are standing on the Emmeramsplatz, at the end of this walk. Benedictine monks settled here at the grave of Saint Emmeram around the year 800, and the abbey lasted for more than a thousand years. The oldest fabric still standing dates from the early twelfth century. The church, now a papal basilica, is one of the important Baroque church interiors in Bavaria; you can go in if the doors are open. The abbey was secularised in 1810. In 1812 the Kingdom of Bavaria transferred the monastery buildings to the house of Thurn und Taxis, as part of the compensation for the nationalisation of the family's postal service. The princes had already been in Regensburg as principal commissioners at the Perpetual Imperial Diet. Over the following century they turned the abbey into a palace. The south wing, finished in 1883 and best seen from the Fürst-Anselm-Allee, is described by the family as the last palace building in Bavaria. The house also calls this the largest privately inhabited palace in Germany, with well over five hundred rooms. Prince Albert II still lives here. Guided tours take visitors through the medieval cloister, the princely crypt chapel, the state rooms, the former stables with the carriage collection, and the treasury. Tickets are at the palace; the park and the view from the avenue are free. This is the end of the walk: eight stops, about two kilometres, from the Stone Bridge on the Danube to the old abbey at the southern edge of the old town. The centre is compact. You can walk back to the river in about fifteen minutes, along Wahlenstraße or through the lanes you have already used, or go on into the palace if a tour is running.

The church and the long palace front on this square belong to St. Emmeram, once a Benedictine imperial abbey and today the residence of the Princes of Thurn und Taxis. We are standing on the Emmeramsplatz, at the end of this walk. Benedictine monks settled here at the grave of Saint Emmeram around the year 800, and the abbey lasted for more than a thousand years. The oldest fabric still standing dates from the early twelfth century. The church, now a papal basilica, is one of the important Baroque church interiors in Bavaria; you can go in if the doors are open. The abbey was secularised in 1810. In 1812 the Kingdom of Bavaria transferred the monastery buildings to the house of Thurn und Taxis, as part of the compensation for the nationalisation of the family's postal service. The princes had already been in Regensburg as principal commissioners at the Perpetual Imperial Diet. Over the following century they turned the abbey into a palace. The south wing, finished in 1883 and best seen from the Fürst-Anselm-Allee, is described by the family as the last palace building in Bavaria. The house also calls this the largest privately inhabited palace in Germany, with well over five hundred rooms. Prince Albert II still lives here. Guided tours take visitors through the medieval cloister, the princely crypt chapel, the state rooms, the former stables with the carriage collection, and the treasury. Tickets are at the palace; the park and the view from the avenue are free. This is the end of the walk: eight stops, about two kilometres, from the Stone Bridge on the Danube to the old abbey at the southern edge of the old town. The centre is compact. You can walk back to the river in about fifteen minutes, along Wahlenstraße or through the lanes you have already used, or go on into the palace if a tour is running.