Baden-Württemberg · Old Town
Heidelberg
A self-guided walking tour of the Heidelberg Old Town, every street in one day.
Every street on the menu.
Every street in the Old Town of Heidelberg is a line of dots you collect by walking it. I have been lying in one of them for six hundred years and I am still not finished.
At a glance
Plan your walk.
- Distance
- 22.3 km
- Time
- about 6.5 hours
- Streets
- 85
- Steps
- 8 streets with steps
- Start point
- Heidelberger Schloss
- Phone needed while walking
- no
- Works offline
- yes
- Expires
- never
The Old Town
Every street, drawn.
Every lane inside that line is a course. The circles are fruit.
Landmarks
What I would eat first.
Landmarks are fruit. The bigger the sight, the bigger the bonus.
Heidelberger Schloss 1,500 points
It sits on the hill above everything, and you will pick it out from half the lanes down here long before you get near it. Nobody ever finished putting it back together: lightning settled that argument, and what stayed is a ruin. Uphill the whole way, no shortcut. Suits me.
Alte Brücke 500 points
Go out between the twin gate towers and keep walking until the noise behind you thins out. From the far bank the town, the hill over it and the water line up in one frame, and that is the picture everybody comes here for. Chewy underfoot the entire way across.
Heiliggeistkirche 500 points
It fills the middle of the market square, so half the lanes here end up pointing at it. Walk all the way round it before you go in. There is more happening at street level on that stonework than anyone expects, and I am keeping it to myself.
Universitätsbibliothek 500 points
Stop on the pavement and look up before you walk past. There is far more carving on that facade than the job called for, and almost nobody lifts their head far enough to see it. Somebody put a great deal of effort into the upper half of a wall. I approve of the effort and I dispute the placement.
Bismarckplatz 250 points
This is the west door of the level. Everything that wants into the Old Town arrives here first, in a hurry, and I never get tired of watching that. From this corner the whole walk runs off east in one straight line.
Friedrich-Ebert-Platz 250 points
The man on the sign started life a few lanes east of this spot, up a staircase, in a flat that is still there. It is open to visitors and it costs nothing to go in. So this level carries him twice: an open corner out at the western end, and the flat itself in the old core.
Kornmarkt 250 points
One turn off the busy lane and the noise drops away. It is small, it is flat, and it has the best seat in the Old Town for looking up at the hill. Everybody stops here without meaning to. So do I.
Providenzkirche 250 points
It stands on the busiest lane in the Old Town, and almost everyone walks straight past the door. Beside it lies a green yard with nothing for sale in it. Two steps off the main street and the whole racket stops. That is the entire trick.
Eating
Actual food.
The map says Baden-Württemberg. The plate says Kurpfalz, the old electorate that was run from this town. So this is a border menu. Liver dumplings and salt crusted yeast buns from the Pfalz, a torn pancake from Baden, and two Swabian names the state counts among its protected ones. Three kitchens on one street, and I eat in all of them.
Meat and fish
Schwäbische Maultaschen
Pasta pockets filled with meat or vegetables, and the spinach in the filling is the giveaway. They go into broth first, and the leftovers are fried with egg the next day. The EU protects the name, and the state counts it among its own. The popular story has monks at Maulbronn hiding meat in them through Lent. The first written record is from 1831, so the monks either kept a very good secret or were never there.
The filling can be vegetables instead of meat. Ask which one the kitchen makes.
Sources: Ministerium für Ländlichen Raum, GenussErbe Bayern (KErn / StMELF)
Leberknödel, hier Lewwerknepp
Liver, bacon, onion and breadcrumbs, rolled into balls and simmered in strong beef broth, which they soak up as they cook. Sauerkraut or horseradish sauce goes on the side. In the Rhein-Neckar region they are on almost every menu. Put a Bratwurst beside them and the plate gets a name of its own, Schiefer Sack. Food that earns a name is food I trust.
Sources: einfach tasty (Ippen Digital), Rhein-Neckar-Insider, Pfalz-Info
Grumbeersupp mit Dampfnudeln
Potato soup first, the Grumbeersupp, then the Dampfnudeln: yeast buns steamed under a lid in salted water until the water is gone and the bottoms fry into a salt crust. The recipes say the buns start to sing at that point, and the lid stays on. Few dishes here start more arguments, sweet or salty, soup or vanilla sauce. I am on the side of the crust.
Ask which Dampfnudel is coming. The sweet one is steamed in milk and sugar and arrives with vanilla sauce, which is another meal entirely.
Sources: Pfalz-Info, Rhein-Neckar-Insider, Das Pfalz-Magazin
Vegetarian
Two. The region has more meat free classics than that, but the others did not reach three independent sources this time, and I only list what the sources hold up.
Schwäbische Spätzle
Spätzle are the Swabian noodle. The EU protects the name, and the state lists it among its own next to the Maultaschen, together with a second name for the same thing, Knöpfle. The meat free way in is Käsespätzle, the noodles with cheese. One noodle with two protected names has more paperwork than I do.
Sources: Ministerium für Ländlichen Raum
Kratzete
A thick savoury pancake, made light with beaten egg white, then torn to pieces in its own pan with two wooden spoons and browned until the pieces go gold. In Baden it is the classic partner for asparagus. It is the only pancake I know that gets finished by being wrecked.
Sources: eat.de, Schöner Tag noch, Münstermarkt Freiburg
Vegan
One, and it is a vegetable rather than a dish. Among the state's protected food names, the plant ones are mostly vegetables, like this cabbage and the salads, cucumbers and tomatoes from the Reichenau. A vegan plate here is whatever the kitchen builds on them, and I will not invent one.
Filderkraut / Filderspitzkraut
Pointed cabbage with a protected name. Baden-Württemberg lists Filderkraut, also called Filderspitzkraut, among its EU protected geographical indications. It is a plant, so it is vegan as it comes. It is a vegetable rather than a dish, and what becomes of it next is up to the kitchen.
Sources: Ministerium für Ländlichen Raum
Afternoon coffee
RADA Coffee & Rösterei come for the one thing: coffee roasted where you drink it
Untere Straße 21
A family from Venezuela roasts the beans right here in the café, in what the guides call the smallest roastery in the region. Most of the green coffee comes from Mexico, Brazil and El Salvador, many of the espresso blends carry Indian robusta, and they visit the farms once a year. The smell reaches the Untere Straße before the door is open.
Every listing gives different opening hours and the house publishes none. Aim for a Monday to Thursday afternoon, the one window they all agree on.
Sources: Der Feinschmecker, Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, European Coffee Trip
Südseite Altstadt where locals go
Untere Neckarstraße 24
The house roasts every bean itself, light, on its own roaster across town in Wieblingen, and pours them here as espresso, flat white or filter. It bakes its own sourdough and its own pastéis de nata too. The café sits on the Neckar bank beside the park in front of the Stadthalle, quiet and still in the middle of things. I have watched this river for a very long time. It has never once brought me a custard tart.
- Mon09:30–18:00
- Tue09:30–18:00
- Wed09:30–18:00
- Thu09:30–18:00
- Fri09:30–18:00
- Sat09:30–18:00
- Sun10:30–17:30
Sources: European Coffee Trip
Checked 30 September 2026.
Name origin
Why it is called Heidelberg.
The oldest spelling on record is Heidelberch, and the reading that has held up best makes it a clipped form of Heidelbeerberg: bilberry hill. German dislikes a word in three parts and quietly drops the middle one. A rival reading, Heidenberg for heather hill, is on the table, and the philologists think little of it. So: a whole city named after fruit growing on a slope. Somebody here had priorities I understand.
Sources: haidelberg.de
Why here
Somebody stood here and decided.
Look at the shape of this level. It is a ribbon, not a ring. The Old Town grew on the floor of the Neckar valley, at the point where the Odenwald stops and the Rhine plain starts, with water down one side and a wooded slope up the other and not much room in between. Four separate landscapes meet inside the city limits. Only one of them concerns me: the one that left a straight strip of lanes behind.
Sources: www.leo-bw.de; www.heidelberg.de
Why then
When the first stone went down.
The town was here before anybody wrote it down. Count Palatine Konrad put it on the south bank of the Neckar next to a castle hamlet at some point before 1180. The first written mention is a charter of Schönau abbey from 1196, and the castle up the slope does not reach parchment until 1225. That is at least sixteen years of a town that officially did not exist. People walked it anyway.
Sources: www.leo-bw.de; www.heidelberg.de
Who ruled
Everyone who thought they owned this.
I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.
- 1180–1214
The counts palatine, before the Wittelsbachs got it. Count Palatine Konrad set a town on the south bank here before 1180, next to a castle hamlet that was already standing. That is the entire founding story: a man with a title decided this piece of valley floor should have streets on it. Somebody drew this level. I have been eating my way along it ever since.
Sources: www.leo-bw.de
- 1214–1720
The Wittelsbachs, who came into the Palatinate in 1214 and held it for five centuries. Ruprecht I was granted the electoral dignity in 1356, which made the man on this hill one of the princes who chose the emperor, and thirty years later he opened a university in the lanes below. From the fourteenth century until 1720 this was the residence: the court lived here, so anybody who wanted anything came here to ask for it.
Sources: www.leo-bw.de; www.heidelberg.de
- 1720–1803
The same family, governing from somewhere else. In 1720 the electoral court moved down the river to Mannheim, and Heidelberg stopped being the place where things were decided and became a place things were decided about. The lanes did not notice. Lanes rarely do.
Sources: www.heidelberg.de; www.leo-bw.de
- 1803–
Baden, and the state that grew out of it. Heidelberg fell to Baden in 1803, was raised to a city district of its own in 1939, and the state archive files it today under the Rhein-Neckar region of Baden-Württemberg. The owners keep changing. Nobody has ever moved a lane.
Sources: www.leo-bw.de
The emblem
What the shield means.
A gold lion with a red crown, on black, standing on a green three humped mound. The lion is not the town's own. It is the sign of the counts palatine, in use as their arms from the start of the thirteenth century, and it steps into Heidelberg's seal in 1344. Before that the seal carried the imperial eagle, which was also theirs. The mound arrived later, cut into the seal of 1436, and it is a pun: that mound is the berg in Heidelberg. So the emblem is the landlord's animal, standing on the town's own name.
Sources: www.leo-bw.de; www.leo-bw.de
Emblem: Public domain — official coat of arms (Wikimedia Commons)
Three facts
Three things I know about this place.
The Hauptstraße runs the whole length of this level and has been closed to traffic since the seventies. Between 1972 and 1978 the town turned it into the longest pedestrian zone in Germany: over 1.6 kilometres of it, straight, with nothing to stop for. That is one very long main course. I take it slowly.
Sources: www.heidelberg.de
Two ages are stacked on top of each other here. The pattern of the lanes is medieval; the houses filling it are baroque. The city describes its own Old Town in exactly those terms: a medieval town plan with narrow lanes and baroque old buildings, and the wealthier houses climbing the slope above. So every facade you pass is younger than the route you are walking on. You are on the older of the two.
Sources: www.heidelberg.de
The oldest university in Germany started in these lanes. Ruprecht I opened it in 1386, with the pope's permission, in the town he happened to be living in, and its founding rector was a Dutchman called Marsilius von Inghen. There is a square on this level with his name on it, between the Jesuit church and the university square. Every generation since has walked down the same lanes to the same lectures. I counted the footsteps for a while and lost track somewhere in the fifteenth century.
Sources: www.heidelberg.de; www.uni-heidelberg.de; www.heidelberg.de
Street words
What the names on the signs mean.
- Gasse
- A lane, and the ordinary word for a street here. Most of them are named after whoever worked in them: Apothekergasse, Krämergasse, Fischergasse, Ziegelgasse. The apothecary, the grocer, the fisher, the bricks.
- Markt
- A market place, named after what was sold on it. Fischmarkt had the fish, Heumarkt the hay, Kornmarkt the grain. The Marktplatz had everything else.
- Bad
- A bathhouse. Oberbadgasse is the upper one, Mittelbadgasse the middle one. Nobody calls a bath the middle one unless there were at least three. That is arithmetic, not history.
- Krahnen
- An old spelling of Kran, a crane. Krahnengasse and Krahnenplatz both drop towards the water, which is exactly where a crane belongs.
- Neckar
- The river, lent to whatever runs beside it. Obere and Untere Neckarstraße are the upper and lower roads along the bank, and the Münz in Neckarmünzgasse and Neckarmünzplatz is a mint.
- Ober / Unter
- Upper and lower, which is what a town ends up with when it is a strip with a hill along one side. Obere and Untere Neckarstraße, Untere Straße, Oberbadgasse, Unterer Fauler Pelz. Names here like to come in pairs, one above the other.
The size of it
Walk it in a day: Heidelberg in numbers.
Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.
- 85streets
- 1,119dots
- 17.6km of street
- 22.3km on foot
- 6.5hours at a stroll
Nearby
Old Towns close to this one.
The game
Your first city is free.
Cobble Gobble is a walking game for iPhone. Claim any city as your free one. Every other city is a one-time purchase you keep for good, Family Sharing included, and a city you own plays fully offline.