Bavaria · Old Town
Nuremberg
A self-guided walking tour of the Nuremberg Old Town, every street in two days.
Every street on the menu.
Every street in the Old Town of Nuremberg 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
- 45.2 km
- Time
- about 13 hours
- Streets
- 217
- Steps
- 15 streets with steps
- Start point
- Kaiserburg
- 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.
Kaiserburg 1,500 points
Everything on this side of the river tilts towards it. Take Burgstraße up and do not stop: it is the straight way to the top, and it gets no gentler on the way. The last stretch is a real climb, and there is no version of this walk where it is not.
Albrecht-Dürer-Haus 500 points
It stands at the top of the town, on the little square just inside the old gate, and it is twice the size of anything else standing there. Sandstone below, wood above, and a roof you could store a winter in. Cross the square and look back from the far corner. From underneath you cannot see the half of it.
Frauenkirche 500 points
Be standing in front of it at noon. Something up on the gable starts moving, it lasts a couple of minutes, and then it is over for the day. I am not telling you what. Get there early and take the middle of the square, because everyone else works that out too late.
Germanisches Nationalmuseum 500 points
You do not have to go inside for this one. The lane in front of it is lined with tall white pillars, twenty-seven of them in one straight row, and each carries a single sentence in German and in one other language. Read as you walk. It is the only street I know that was built to be taken at walking pace.
Schöner Brunnen 500 points
The tallest thing on the big square, and the only one standing on its own. Gilded stone stacked upward until it runs out, shaped like a spire that mislaid its church. Go right round the back of it. It was made to be read from all sides, and most visitors only ever see one.
St. Lorenz 500 points
Do not come at it sideways. Walk up Karolinenstraße instead and keep your eyes ahead: the street was planned with this west front as the thing at the far end of it, and it works. Then go and stand under the doorway, close enough that you have to tip your head right back.
St. Sebald 500 points
Go round to the east end. The roof over the choir is far steeper and far higher than the roof over the rest, so from down by the river it reads as a second building standing behind the first. A hundred years later they did the same trick on the far bank. Two steep roofs, one river between them.
Balkon über der Pegnitz 250 points
Outside the wall, down a path that slips under the wall and then under the road, and up a short flight of steps. A small ledge in the park with the river below it. Nothing to read, nothing to queue for. Stand at the rail and let the town go quiet behind you.
Egidienplatz 250 points
The high end of the northern half, and the biggest breathing space on the whole walk. Then find the passage through the front on the north side of it. Behind that front is a courtyard with arcades stacked three levels up, put back together stone by stone from photographs. It is not open every day. Worth timing your walk for.
Frauentorturm 250 points
If you arrive by train, this is your front door, and few towns have a better one. Do not photograph it from outside and walk on. Go under it, turn on the spot, and look up at the inside face. Then look at how thick it is where the road goes through.
Freiung 250 points
A wide flat shelf at the top of the climb, which is the only flat thing up here. Nothing was ever built on it and nothing ever will be. Put your back to the stonework, let the ones who took the stairs go past, and give it five minutes. This is the last quiet before the big one.
Laufer Schlagturm 250 points
A gate tower that ended up in the middle of town, because the wall moved further out and left it behind. Walk through the arch, not round it. Find the little niches in the passage walls, then look straight up.
Maxbrücke 250 points
In the western stretch of the river, not long before it leaves the walls. Stop halfway over and face upstream: a roofed wooden footbridge, a tower standing right in the water, and a long half-timbered house along the bank. Chances are you have seen that picture on a postcard. The bridge you are standing on to take it, I am saving for when you get there.
Tucherschloss 250 points
Out on the quiet edge of the level, behind a high wall, down a lane most visitors never turn into. From the street you get almost nothing: a front, and one oriel leaning out over the pavement. Go in. Behind the building the ground drops away in terraces, and at the bottom of them stands a single Renaissance hall, carried here in pieces and put back together.
Weißer Turm 250 points
Five of the long streets on this half of town bend in and meet at this one point. Stand at its foot and look back down them. The whole plan of the southern half is aimed right here, which is a lot of planning for one lump of masonry to carry.
Eating
Actual food.
Nuremberg made its money on small work and long roads. The spices came up from Venice, the honey came out of the imperial forest at the gates, the vegetables came off market gardens just past the north wall. Then the trades here did what the trades here always did and shrank it. A sausage the length of a little finger. A biscuit pressed into a carved wooden mould. A town whose toys went everywhere fed itself the same way.
Meat and fish
Nürnberger Rostbratwürste, drei im Weggla
As long as a little finger and about as thick, marjoram in the seasoning, filled into a sheep casing. Written down here in 1313, which makes it older than most of the wall around you. Three go into a split roll. The roll is a Weggla and the order is drei im Weggla.
Standing at a hatch is the normal way to eat these. If you want a chair and a plate, ask for six or eight with kraut.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Fränkisches Schäufele
Pork shoulder roasted with the bone still in it and the rind left on. Done properly the rind throws small blisters and goes crisp. The bone on your plate afterwards has the shape of a small shovel, which is the whole of the name, and Franconia has never wanted a better one.
Potato dumplings come with it. That is not a choice, it is the arrangement.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Aischgründer Karpfen
Pond carp, flat in the body, from water an hour west of here. Monasteries had the ponds dug in the Middle Ages because the ground was too wet to farm and Lent asked for more fish than anyone could catch. Franconia eats it only in months with an r in them, so September to April.
Ask for it fränkisch gebacken, turned in flour and fried. There are other ways and this is the one the region argues for.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Vegetarian
Nürnberger Lebkuchen
Spice cake with almost no flour in it. Two things made it possible here and both arrived by road: honey out of the imperial forest at the gates, and spices off the Venice trade. The guild of Lebzelter formed here in 1643. Elisenlebkuchen is the top grade and may hold only ten per cent flour, so most of what you bite is nuts.
Sold here all year, not only in December. Ask for Elisen if you want the graded one.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Fränkische rohe Klöße
Potato dumplings made from raw potato rather than cooked. They used to be called green dumplings, because that is the colour raw potato dough goes before anybody treats it. Tear one open with two forks instead of cutting it. The rough surface holds more of whatever is on the plate.
The Kloß is the meat free half. What gets poured over it usually is not, so ask.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Nürnberger Eierzucker
A hard pale biscuit pressed into a carved mould, so the picture stands up on top while the underside browns. Riders, roosters, angels. The moulds were clay first, then wood for three centuries running. A town that carved toys for a living was always going to carve its biscuits too.
This one is a December thing. Out of season, ask an old bakery whether it still keeps the moulds.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Vegan
Knoblauchsländer Gemüse
The market gardens start just past the north wall and run out towards Fürth and Erlangen. Two hundred holdings on two thousand three hundred hectares: asparagus, kohlrabi, leek, radish, spinach, cabbage. Known since the fifteenth century. The place is called Garlic Land and it was named after the onions. Nobody has fixed this.
Ask at a market stall which of it came off the Knoblauchsland. In season, most of it did.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Fränkisches Holzofenbrot
Rye sourdough of flour, water and salt, led through three or four stages across about a day. Then wood burns down on the oven floor itself, the embers are swept out, and the loaf goes in on a long beech paddle to bake over an hour on stored heat. It stays fresh for most of a week.
A whole loaf is heavy. Ask for a quarter and carry that instead.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Bayerischer Meerrettich
Horseradish, grown in the three districts immediately north of the city. The state register calls this the most tradition rich growing area in the world and dates it to the middle of the fifteenth century. A traveller wrote down the field crop at Baiersdorf in 1787. Grated fresh at the table, it reaches you before it reaches the plate.
Ask for it freshly grated. The jarred kind is usually let down with cream.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Late breakfast
Pockets come for the one thing: the baked pastry pockets
Hallplatz 2
Pockets of dough, crisp outside and filled with anything from sweet to savoury, every one made and baked in the café itself. The coffee comes from Kaffeewerkstatt Kucha, roasted in Bavaria. A pocket is the right shape for a breakfast. Nothing falls out until you want it to.
- Mon09:00–14:00
- Tueclosed
- Wed09:00–18:00
- Thu09:00–18:00
- Fri09:00–18:00
- Sat09:00–18:00
- Sun09:00–18:00
Tuesday shut. Monday only until two, the other days nine to six.
Sources: Falstaff, nordbayern.de (Nürnberger Nachrichten), inFranken.de
Konditorei Café Beer, Breite Gasse where locals go
Breite Gasse 79
A Konditorei on Breite Gasse, the shopping lane, rather than on the visitor route. The master confectioner keeps about sixty cakes and tortes in the repertoire. Breakfast is on offer. The glass counter is the actual argument, and it is a long one.
- Mon09:00–18:00
- Tue09:00–18:00
- Wed09:00–18:00
- Thu09:00–18:00
- Fri09:00–18:00
- Sat09:00–18:00
- Sunclosed
Shut on Sunday. There is a second house up at the castle. This one is on Breite Gasse.
Sources: Der Feinschmecker
Afternoon coffee
BERGBRAND Kaffeerösterei, Weißgerbergasse come for the one thing: the coffee roasted on demand
Weißgerbergasse 38
The roaster is in the house and it roasts on demand, so freshness is not a promise on a bag. It is the schedule. Weißgerbergasse outside is the lane everybody photographs. The cup is the reason to step in off it.
- Mon08:00–19:00
- Tue08:00–19:00
- Wed08:00–19:00
- Thu08:00–19:00
- Fri08:00–19:00
- Sat08:00–19:00
- Sun10:00–19:00
Open every day, Sunday from ten. There is a second Bergbrand house. This one is the roastery on Weißgerbergasse.
Sources: Sprudge, European Coffee Trip
Nest Coffee where locals go
Am Wespennest 11
A café so small the local paper said you could walk past it, in a lane off the Pegnitz called Am Wespennest, at the wasps' nest. Finding it is half the point. Nobody has been stung. I asked.
- Monclosed
- Tue10:00–18:00
- Wed10:00–18:00
- Thu10:00–18:00
- Fri10:00–18:00
- Sat10:00–18:00
- Sunclosed
Open Tuesday to Saturday, ten to six. Sunday and Monday shut.
Sources: nordbayern.de (Nürnberger Nachrichten), curt Magazin Nürnberg
Dinner
Das Steichele the old one
Knorrstraße 2-8
Wood panelled rooms a few steps from the White Tower, and Franconian home cooking with nothing added to it. Slow Food's volunteers in this city file it under the old houses. Panelling goes that dark one evening at a time. So does a kitchen's reputation.
- Mon17:00–23:00
- Tue11:30–14:30, 17:00–23:00
- Wed11:30–14:30, 17:00–23:00
- Thu11:30–14:30, 17:00–23:00
- Fri11:30–14:30, 17:00–23:00
- Sat11:30–14:30, 17:00–23:00
- Sunclosed
Shut on Sunday and on public holidays. Until May it opens on Monday evening too, and over the summer Monday is shut. The kitchen serves lunch Tuesday to Saturday until two, and dinner until nine.
Sources: Slow Food Genussführer, Schlemmer Atlas (Busche Verlag)
Wirtshaus Hütt'n where locals go
Bergstraße 20
Wood on every side and Franconian home cooking on the plate, the plain kind, at prices a city magazine called fair. Bergstraße climbs to the castle right outside the door. Eat first. The castle has waited this long and it can wait until the plate is empty.
- Mon11:00–24:00
- Tueclosed
- Wed11:00–24:00
- Thu11:00–24:00
- Fri11:00–24:00
- Sat11:00–24:00
- Sun11:00–24:00
Tuesday is the rest day.
Sources: Schlemmer Atlas (Busche Verlag), curt Magazin Nürnberg
Checked 4 October 2026.
With kids
Short legs, big appetite.
The streets here are full of dots to collect, and a child on a hunt forgets to be tired. Here is a short loop for the smallest walkers.
- The loop
- Weißer Turm, Maxbrücke, Schöner Brunnen, Frauenkirche, and back to the start
- Distance
- 1.7 km
- Time
- about 35 minutes of walking at a child's pace (3 km/h)
- Steps
- no streets with steps on the loop
- Playgrounds
- none on the map near the loop
- Public toilets
- 9 near the loop, 4 with a changing table
- Drinking water
- 4 near the loop
- Ice cream
- 11 near the loop
Near the loop means within 150 m of it, counted from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Name origin
Why it is called Nuremberg.
The oldest form of the name survives in one line of a document from 1050: Nŏrenberc. The end of it is -berc, and there is indeed a berg here, a steep sandstone ridge with a castle sitting on top of it. The front half is not settled. The author of the town's new place-name book thinks the likeliest reading is 'Felsberg', rock hill. If she is right, I have been lying on the answer for a thousand years and nobody thought to ask me.
Sources: www.nuernberg.de p. 2; www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de; www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 2; www.nn.de
Why here
Somebody stood here and decided.
A steep sandstone ridge over the Pegnitz, in the middle of a great deal of royal forest. The rock carried a fortification by the tenth century at the latest, and people were already living at its foot. Around 1040 Heinrich III put a new imperial castle on it, a base for stretching the empire's reach this far. Two farm estates supplied it, one on each bank, and the town spread out from them. It also sat where long-distance roads crossed, which never hurts. I have views about that rock. All of them are favourable.
Sources: www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 2; www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de; www.nuernberg.de p. 2; www.kaiserburg-nuernberg.de
Why then
When the first stone went down.
There is a date, and it is oddly precise. On 16 July 1050 the emperor stopped here, held court, and put in writing that a bondswoman named Sigena was free. The last line of that document reads actum Nŏrenberc, done at Nŏrenberc, and that line is the first time this place exists on paper. The town keeps the day as its birthday. Only five documents of that kind survive anywhere in the original. So the birth certificate of Nuremberg is somebody else's release papers.
Sources: www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de; www.nuernberg.de; www.nuernberg.de p. 2; www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 2
Who ruled
Everyone who thought they owned this.
I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.
- 1050–1219
Kings. Around 1040 Heinrich III founded a new imperial castle on the rock, in the middle of a very large block of crown land. Soon after 1050 he moved the market right over from the royal court at Fürth next door. His son cut the land around it out of the county it had belonged to and made it a district of the empire in its own right, with its own high court. Kings came and went. The rock stayed where it was. I respect that.
Sources: www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 2; www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de
- 1219–1427
The citizens, in instalments, and every instalment is a document. In 1219 Friedrich II gave them a charter that put them under his protection alone and handed them advantages on coinage and tolls. The council first appears in 1256. In 1356 the Golden Bull made this the town where every newly elected king had to hold his first assembly, which set Nuremberg beside Frankfurt and Aachen. In 1424 the imperial regalia were sent here for keeping, and here they stayed until 1796. Between 1385 and 1427 the burgraves were pushed out of the town step by step, and in 1427 the council bought their castle and the imperial forests. Not every right came with the sale: the high court, the high hunt and the escort of travellers outside the town stayed with the burgraves' family, the Zollern. Two hundred years of paperwork and still not finished. That is roughly my pace.
Sources: www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de; www.nuernberg.de
- 1427–1806
The council, on its own, for close to four hundred years. Outside the walls it ran about 1,200 square kilometres of countryside, the largest land territory any imperial city ever held. Inside them the same families held the same seats: five ranks, strictly separated, sealed shut by a statute in 1521. Nuremberg was the first imperial city to bring in the Reformation, in 1525. After that the money thinned out, the rules did not, and the debts grew.
Sources: www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de
- 1806–
Bavaria. In September 1806 the new king of Bavaria took the imperial city, four years after it had slipped through the settlement that swallowed most of the others. Then, in 1835, the first railway in Germany ran from here to Fürth. The market had come up from Fürth nearly eight hundred years before that. I like a town that returns a favour eventually.
Sources: www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de; www.nuernberg.de
The emblem
What the shield means.
The shield is split down the middle. On one half, half a black eagle on gold, cut off at the split. On the other, red and silver, divided on the slant five times. The icon shows the eagle whole, because half a bird beside a set of stripes is not something anyone can pick out at this size. The stripes are said to go back to the border on the burgraves' shield. Their colours are the empire's too, though, so both halves end up saying the same thing: an imperial city, answering to the head of the empire and to nobody in between.
Sources: hdbg.eu; www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de
Emblem: Public domain — official coat of arms (Wikimedia Commons)
Three facts
Three things I know about this place.
The belt of wall, towers and ditches around this Old Town is the best preserved of any large city in Europe. The last ring was closed in 1452 and it has held its shape since. The heritage record is blunt about the tall gate towers in it: worthless for defence. They were given their stone jackets in the sixteenth century because a town that looked like this was making a claim, and a claim outlasts a wall.
Sources: www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 4; www.nuernberg.de; www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 3
From the fifteenth century a strict building code told this town what a house had to be: stone, eaves side to the street, no jutting upper storeys. Timber framing was generally not allowed and never quite died out. So the showing off went into the details: small oriels called Chörlein, ornamental gables, hoist hatches, dormers. Corner houses and houses stepping forward into the lane were allowed richer dress. The patricians, with few exceptions, kept their grandest work for the courtyards behind the fronts, where nobody walking past can see it. Count the Chörlein as you go. They look like something you could pick.
Sources: www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 4
This is two towns inside one wall. North of the river the older half grew up under the castle and follows the contour lines of the castle hill, so its lanes bend with it. South of it the Staufer laid out a slightly younger half to a plan: Adlerstraße, Karolinenstraße, Brunnengasse, Breite Gasse and Frauengasse run almost straight and almost parallel, then all draw in on one tower, the Weißer Turm, which marks where the planned town stopped. The two halves were not brought inside one ring of walls until 1320/25. Walk out of one and into the other and your feet notice before you do.
Sources: www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 2; www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 3; www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 5
Street words
What the names on the signs mean.
- Gasse
- The ordinary word for a street here, and it is on more of them than anything else. Bindergasse, Entengasse, Rosengasse, Tuchgasse, Lammsgasse. If a name here ends in anything, it ends in this.
- Gäßchen
- The same thing after it has been squeezed. Schmalzgäßchen, Heugäßchen, Kannengäßchen, Wollengäßchen, Stangengäßchen. My preferred width.
- -tormauer
- A street that runs along the inside of the town wall, named for the gate it starts at. Frauentormauer, Neutormauer, Maxtormauer, Spittlertormauer, Laufertormauer, Westtormauer. Walk one of those and you are eating the wall.
- Zwinger
- The strip between the outer wall and the inner one, which is now a street with a name of its own. Tuchmacherzwinger, named for the cloth makers, is the one inside the level. Long, narrow, walled on both sides.
- -schmied
- A smith, and the trade got the lane. Pfannenschmiedsgasse for pans, Rotschmiedsgasse for red brass, Zirkelschmiedsgasse for compasses, plus an Obere and an Untere Schmiedgasse. The work has gone. The addresses stayed.
- Steg
- A footbridge that counts as a street. Kettensteg and Hoher Steg cross the water on not much more than planks and iron. No car has ever been on either, and they still have dots.
The size of it
Walk it in a day: Nuremberg in numbers.
Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.
- 217streets
- 2,318dots
- 37.0km of street
- 45.2km on foot
- 13hours 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.