Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Rothenburg — "red castle above the Tauber" — takes its name from a castle the counts of Comburg-Rothenburg built on the hilltop in 1070. When their line died out, the lands passed to the Hohenstaufen; Konrad III built a new castle on the spur in 1142, and the town was founded around 1170, centred on the marketplace and St. James's Church. Walls and towers followed in the thirteenth century, and in 1274 Rudolf of Habsburg made Rothenburg a Free Imperial City. Fairs, a Holy Blood pilgrimage and a territory of some 390 square kilometres made it one of the larger cities of the Empire, with about 5,500 people inside the walls. The Jewish community produced Rabbi Meir ben Baruch, a jurist of European reputation who died in 1293. An earthquake destroyed the Staufer castle in 1356; only the chapel of St. Blaise remains.

The Thirty Years' War ended Rothenburg's rise. In October 1631 the Catholic general Tilly took the Lutheran town; the legend that he spared it after the former mayor Georg Nusch drained 3¼ litres of wine in one draught first appears more than a century later. Plague followed in 1634, and the impoverished town stopped growing, preserving its seventeenth-century form. It passed to Bavaria in 1803. Painters such as Carl Spitzweg discovered it in the late nineteenth century, tourists followed, and laws were passed to prevent major changes.

The Nazis hailed it as "the most German of German towns" and expelled its Jewish citizens in October 1938. On 31 March 1945 bombing killed 37 people and destroyed about a third of the houses, mostly in the east. The US Assistant Secretary of War, John J. McCloy, had the army ordered not to use artillery; the local commander gave up the town, and US troops occupied it on 17 April. Donations from around the world paid to rebuild it.

Rothenburg is, for many visitors abroad, the image of a medieval German town, and it has shaped that image in film and art. Its streets served as the Vulgarian village in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Disney's artist Gustaf Tenggren based Pinocchio's village on photographs of it, and novels, comics and video games have borrowed its towers and lanes.

Local culture keeps its legends alive. The Meistertrunk, though historians agree it never happened, has been performed as a play every Whitsun since 1881 and was added to Bavaria's list of intangible cultural heritage in 2014 and Germany's in 2016; the figures of the clock on the Ratstrinkstube of 1466 re-enact the drinking scene on the hour at set times of day. A traditional shepherds' dance has its own museum in the fortified church of St. Wolfgang. The town's art treasures include the Holy Blood Altarpiece by the Würzburg wood carver Tilman Riemenschneider in St. James's, and the church at Detwang has a crucifixion altarpiece attributed to him and his workshop.

Christmas is a year-round theme: the Käthe Wohlfahrt company, which moved here in 1977, runs its main shop and a Christmas museum on Herrngasse, and the Reiterlesmarkt fills the old town in Advent. Wine is part of local identity too, with old wine taverns and a vineyard slope of the town's own.

About 11,200 people lived in Rothenburg in 2018, a figure that has barely changed in decades, and the town covers far more than the walled centre, including villages such as Detwang in the valley. Inside the walls it is in many ways a normal modern German town, with concessions to the tourist trade concentrated around the Marktplatz, Herrngasse and Schmiedgasse.

Tourism shapes the economy. Before the Covid-19 pandemic about half of the town's visitors came from abroad, many of them on organised tours of Europe from Asia, and many shops struggled to survive while travel stopped. Wine-growing was once an important trade; today most of the wine made here is sold to visitors. The Wildbad, a spa hotel built in the Tauber valley around 1900, has been a Protestant conference centre since 1982.

The day follows the coach tours, and restaurants serve early, with few open late. Residents use the valley for recreation, and the town is the starting point of the Tauber valley cycle route to Wertheim and of long walking trails, and the end of a Way of St. James pilgrim route.

The Schneeball, or "snowball", is Rothenburg's signature. Strips of shortcrust dough made from flour, eggs, sugar, butter, cream and plum schnapps are woven loosely around a stick into a ball eight to ten centimetres across, deep-fried, and dusted with icing sugar. Once made only for weddings and special occasions, Schneeballen are now sold all year in bakeries, pastry shops and cafés, with chocolate, nut and marzipan versions alongside the classic, and are the town's most common souvenir.

Savoury food is Franconian. Schäufele is roast pork shoulder with a crackling crust; Saure Zipfel, or Blaue Zipfel, are bratwurst simmered in a broth of vinegar, onions and spices; and the small Nuremberg bratwurst comes from the city to the east.

Rothenburg marks the southern tip of the Franconian wine country, and its own vineyard slope, the Rothenburger Eich, supplies the old wine taverns. Franconian wine, mostly Silvaner and Müller-Thurgau, comes in the flat, round Bocksbeutel bottle, and beer from the region's many small breweries is the everyday alternative.