Almost fantasy

Walk with a night watchman to see lovely medieval Rothenburg

Despite its fairy-tale Bavarian perfection and its great number of visitors, the walled medieval city of Rothenburg is a real treat. This lovely German town avoided being bombed in World War II, and most of what is seen today is real, not restored.

Its full name, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, translates as “Red castle over the Tauber,” a reference to its red roofs and location on a plateau above the Tauber River. The Nazis considered it Germany’s hometown, at least partly because it expelled its Jewish population in 1938. But its beauty was also well known to the allies, who offered to spare the town further bombing if German forces would surrender it. The two sides agreed, and Rothenburg was largely spared even though the war went on around it.

When our small motorcoach approached Rothenburg, our driver had to park in an outlying lot and wait for a pilot to guide him through its narrow streets hung with ornate and picturesque signs, not unlike the way ships are guided into port.

We were spending the night ,and our luggage needed to be dropped off at the Hotel Eisenhut, a delightful place created from a quartet of 16th-century mansions on the main shopping street just a block from the Market Square. After that, the bus was banished to the outskirts along with other motorcoaches.

Thankfully, Rothenburg is largely a pedestrian city, and its turrets, half-timbered houses, leaded-glass bay windows and Renaissance housefronts are best seen on foot. Walk its stone walls, studded with 42 towers,

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