Rothenburg ob den Tauber

I walked Etsy the last morning we were in Bad Windsheim, packed things up, and then headed out once J was done with her last conference day.  We decided to do some sightseeing of Rothenburg ob der Tauber before heading home.  I don't have all of the pictures here, but I'll post what I have immediately on hand.

We first tried to catch the noon tolling of the main square clock, but missed it by two minutes.  We then wandered around.  First, we went up the Rathaus tower and peeked out the window.  Second, we looked through several Christmas shops.  Third, we toured the gardens and looked at the Jewish memorial (apparently, there was another devastating ethnic cleansing of Judaism in Germany in the 1200's, according to the memorial).  Fourth, we wandered through more shops.  Fifth, we tried to tour through the churches, but didn't feel like spending euro to do it.  Sixth, we looked at some of the ramparts, the section of town destroyed by WWII bombing and being rebuilt by donated support.  All in all, Rothenburg is very impressive.  It's literally an entire city encased in a large town wall.  Most walled-in medieval cities are quite small, whereas Rothenburg felt like well over a square mile in size!  It felt quite spacious for being completely walled in, and the architecture is indeed very well preserved.  It also felt like a modern town in that road construction was still being done, there were grocery stores, cafes, restaurants, a Rathaus, several churches, and a more residential section of town.

Here are some of the pictures I have off hand...

This is the town symbol.  I thought it looked a lot like the symbol for the Freys of Game of Thrones.

This is in the gardens.  I liked the mossy rock water spring touch with fish in the pond, but again, I like all of those things:)

Here is from the Marktplatz of Rothenburg looking down one of the streets to what we thought was a gate.  Turned out, it was not a gate but the lone random gate-looking clock tower in town.

This is also from the Marktplatz looking downhill to one of the actual gates.  Rothenburg has six gates that I can remember.  They are easy to spot because they are all very tall, have large doorways at their base, and nearly all have clocks on them.

This is from the "Ramparts" on the wall under reconstruction looking into the city at the largest church.  This particular church had a tunnel underneath where carriages and pedestrian can still travel through.  This is the first cathedral I have ever seen that was built for common traffic to travel under.

This is a view down the "Ramparts."  For 1000 euro you can have your name on a plaque on the wall as you see here as you have effectively donated enough money to restore one meter of wall.  You can donate more if you like.  I'm sure they won't mind.

Here is a street-level view of the wall under contruction.

Here is a street level view of the "Ramparts."  The towers in the distance are one of the gates.

This is inside the moat outside the "Ramparts."  Rothenburg is surrounded by a cliff or moat on all sides except for one gate.  That gate was the only gate susceptible to attack and was always the only gate that invading forces took to enter.

An opposite view of the same moat leading to the cliff.