Bavaria · Old Town
Passau
A self-guided walking tour of the Passau Old Town, every street in one day.
Every street on the menu.
Every street in the Old Town of Passau 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
- 18.3 km
- Time
- about 5 hours
- Streets
- 81
- Steps
- 13 streets with steps
- Start point
- Dom St. Stephan
- 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.
Dom St. Stephan 1,500 points
The white one at the top of the hill, on the square the bishops arranged their whole quarter around. From May to October, at noon, every day but Sundays and holidays, something starts in here. I am not telling you what. Main course.
Mariahilf 500 points
High on the hill across the Inn. You can pick out its two towers from almost anywhere on the peninsula, which is rather the point of putting a church up there. From the terrace the entire Old Town is laid out below you like a plate.
Pfarrkirche Sankt Paul 500 points
It stands over the old cattle market, which is my kind of address. Come up the big open stair on the west side, not in from the square. The pointed tower cap is how you find it from anywhere on the hill.
Prinzregent-Luitpold-Brücke 500 points
Your way across to the north bank. Stop in the middle and turn around: from here you see the peninsula from the side, all at once. Then keep going, because a bridge is the chewiest thing I eat all day.
Veste Oberhaus 500 points
On a wedge of rock across the river, right where the Ilz comes in. It is a proper climb and there is no way around that. From the top the whole peninsula is in front of you, tip and all. This is the one I chew slowly.
Alte Residenz 250 points
It fills a whole block behind the Dom and gives the lane almost nothing. Two courtyards are hiding in there. I like a building that keeps the good part inside. So does a pastry.
Altes Rathaus 250 points
I approve of the square out front. It was a fish market first, which is the correct order of priorities. Inside, the great hall is painted end to end with scenes from the town, and the carillon in the tower rings twice a day.
Dreiflüsseeck 250 points
The pointed end of the Old Town, where the peninsula simply runs out. Stand at the railing and look down. The Inn and the Ilz come in from opposite sides and neither one gives way. I save this bite for last, on purpose.
Severinstor 250 points
You do not look at this one. You walk under it. A gate with a road still running through it is my favourite kind of leftover.
Wassertörlschanze 250 points
Up at the Veste Oberhaus there are two places to stop and look. Most people only ever find one. This is the other one, a few steps down and easy to walk straight past. Go and find it. I have never once regretted a second helping.
Eating
Actual food.
Three rivers meet here and so do three kitchens. Bavarian from the hills, Austrian from across the Inn, Bohemian up the old salt road. Salt off the river had to sit in Passau, offered for sale for three days, before it could go on. A town that handled everyone's salt learned to season its own food.
Meat and fish
Bayerischer Schweinebraten mit Reiberknödel
Pork roast with crackling. The dumpling here is grated potato, not bread, and Lower Bavaria calls it a Reiberknödel. Ask for a corner piece. There is a correct amount of crackling and it is all of it.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern, Bairisches Wörterbuch
Pichelsteiner
Meat and whatever roots were in the cellar, layered in one pot and left alone. Lower Bavaria has argued about which village invented it since the 1740s, and printed it in 1894. I like a dish with a disputed address.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Fisch aus den drei Flüssen
Fish, in a town the bishops ran for six hundred years. Church rule made roughly 150 days a year meatless, so fish was never a treat here. It was Friday.
Sources: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns
Vegetarian
Dampfnudel mit Vanillesoße
Yeast dough cooked in milk until the underside turns crisp, then flooded with vanilla sauce. In Bavaria this is allowed to be the whole meal, not the thing after it. I approve of the order of operations.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Semmelknödel mit Schwammerl
Bread rolls, egg, onion and milk rolled into a sphere and boiled. The state register names mushrooms as a proper partner, so this is nobody's substitute. Autumn is when the forest north of here pays out.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Kaiserschmarrn
Sweet pancake torn up in its own pan, with plum compote. Everyone will tell you an emperor named it. Historians think it came from Kaser, the word for a dairyman. I prefer the boring answer.
Vegan
This is the short list, and the reason is history rather than neglect. Lent here banned milk, cheese, butter and eggs as well as meat, and that was over 150 days a year. People bought written dispensations to get the butter back. The plant food is real. It is just older than the signboards outside.
Brezn mit Radi
A lye pretzel, and a white radish cut in a spiral and salted until it weeps. The state register pairs the two itself. The radish is reliably plant food.
Ask the bakery about the pretzel. The fat in the dough is the bakery's own business.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern
Bayerischer Kartoffelsalat
Bavarian potato salad is dressed with broth, vinegar and oil, never with mayonnaise. Warm, and it slumps a little on the plate. That is correct.
Ask about the broth before you order. It is usually beef, and the kitchen will often just use water instead.
Sources: Lecker, Küchengötter, Thomas Sixt
Late breakfast
ProLi where locals go
Unterer Sand 13
The same family has owned this cinema building on the Unterer Sand since 1927. The 2013 flood left almost nothing of it, and in 2018 it came back with a café in front, one the campus magazine says the town's food life can no longer do without. Tartelettes, homemade cakes known across town, and a breakfast the students found first. The counter is light blue and shaped like a wave, for the Inn outside. The Inn has been in here before. This is the polite version.
- Mon10:00–24:00
- Tue10:00–24:00
- Wed10:00–24:00
- Thu10:00–24:00
- Fri10:00–02:00
- Sat09:00–02:00
- Sun09:00–24:00
Breakfast stops at 13:00. It starts at 10:00 on weekdays and at 9:00 at the weekend.
Sources: blank. Onlinemagazin, Bürgerblick Passau
Afternoon coffee
KaffeeWerk where locals go
Kirchenplatz 3
Across the Inn on the Kirchenplatz, and the local monthly calls it the meeting point of the Innstadt. Homemade cakes, small plates, flea market furniture and pictures by local artists. Ask for the poppy seed and raspberry cake. Deck chairs stand out on the square, which is furniture that assumes you are staying.
- Mon10:00–19:00
- Tue10:00–19:00
- Wed10:00–19:00
- Thu10:00–19:00
- Fri10:00–19:00
- Sat10:00–19:00
- Sun13:00–18:00
On a public holiday, come after 13:00. It keeps Sunday hours then.
Sources: Bürgerblick Passau
Dinner
Goldenes Schiff the old one
Unterer Sand 8
An inn has stood on this spot since the 13th century, by the count of the local monthly. The kitchen is Bavarian with an Austrian lean, and the regional Slow Food guide lists it, vegetarian plates included. Wood-panelled parlours inside, a terrace under a honey locust tree outside. The monthly's tip is gingerbread parfait with pickled figs.
- Monclosed
- Tue11:30–24:00
- Wed11:30–24:00
- Thu11:30–24:00
- Fri11:30–24:00
- Sat11:30–24:00
- Sunclosed
The hot kitchen runs from 12:00 to 22:00. Come for dinner before ten.
Sources: Slow Food Deutschland, Bürgerblick Passau
Kranabith come for the one thing: the dishes from its own farm
Große Messergasse 8
Bavarian and Syrian cooking on one menu, shish kebab beside roast pork, and much of what goes into both comes from the owners' own organic farm at Frauenberg, up in the Bavarian Forest. The pumpkin for the soup, the beef for the goulash, the kid goat for the Arabic safiha. The cattle are Höhenrotvieh, an old breed they had to fetch from the only other farm in Bavaria that kept it. A pumpkin raised around 850 metres up has earned its soup.
- Monclosed
- Tue11:30–14:30
- Wed11:30–14:30
- Thu11:30–14:00, 18:00–22:00
- Fri11:30–14:00, 18:00–22:00
- Sat11:30–14:00, 18:00–22:00
- Sun11:30–14:30
Dinner is Thursday to Saturday only, and the hot kitchen closes at 21:00. The other days it is lunch only, and Monday it is shut.
Sources: Onlinemagazin da Hogn, Haibischl
Pasta e Vino where locals go
Schmiedgasse 21
Across the Inn on Schmiedgasse, in a small vaulted room that used to be the Gasthaus zum Mondschein. The local monthly says anyone in Passau who asks for the best Italian, meaning the cooking and not the pizza, usually hears this name. A couple from the Abruzzo has run it since 2010, and the pasta is made in house. Sea fish and seafood come over the Alps with the house's own couriers. That is a long way to travel to become dinner.
- Monclosed
- Tueclosed
- Wed17:30–22:00
- Thu17:30–22:00
- Fri17:30–22:00
- Sat17:30–22:00
- Sun11:30–14:00, 17:30–21:00
Lunch is Sunday only, 11:30 to 14:00. On a public holiday it keeps Sunday hours.
Sources: Bürgerblick Passau
Checked 26 September 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
- Dom St. Stephan, Dreiflüsseeck, Prinzregent-Luitpold-Brücke, and back to the start
- Distance
- 2.1 km
- Time
- about 40 minutes of walking at a child's pace (3 km/h)
- Steps
- on Zinngießergasse
- Playgrounds
- 4 near the loop
- Public toilets
- 5 near the loop, 1 with a changing table
- Drinking water
- 2 near the loop
- Ice cream
- 1 near the loop
Near the loop means within 150 m of it, counted from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Name origin
Why it is called Passau.
Passau is a Roman word that got chewed. The camp on this tongue of land was called Batavis, after soldiers who came here from Batavia on the lower Rhine. Batavis wore down to Pazzawe, and Pazzawe wore down to Passau. Names get eaten too. It just takes longer than a lane.
Sources: www.roemermuseum.passau.de; www.geku.uni-passau.de p. 28
Why here
Somebody stood here and decided.
Look at the shape of it. The Old Town is a narrow spur of rock: the Inn down one side, the Danube down the other, steep drops on three sides. Both rivers have carried boats for as long as anyone can say. Whoever stood up here saw everything coming and took a cut of it. That is more or less how I pick a lane, too.
Sources: www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 1; www.roemermuseum.passau.de
Why then
When the first stone went down.
Around the middle of the first century the Danube became the northern edge of the Roman empire, and an edge needs watching. A small camp went up here to do the watching. So the founding date says less about this rock than about a line somebody drew a long way upstream.
Sources: www.roemermuseum.passau.de; www.limesstrasse.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.
- 50–488
Rome. The Danube here was the northern edge of the empire for the best part of five hundred years, and this tongue of land held a camp for most of it. Then the border moved, the order came to go back to Italy, and everybody went.
Sources: www.limesstrasse.de p. 2; www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 1; www.geku.uni-passau.de p. 28
- 1217–1803
The bishops, and not only in church. Between 1217 and 1220 the emperor enfeoffed Bishop Ulrich II with the county in the Ilzgau, and a charter of 1220 let bishops across the empire build principalities out of their own land. From then on the men in the Dom ruled here as imperial princes. It held until 1803. The citizens down the hill spent a good part of those centuries arguing about who was allowed to hold the town seal.
Sources: www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de; hdbg.eu
- 1803–
Bavaria. The Reichsdeputationshauptschluss of 1803 dissolved the prince-bishopric, and after some wrangling over who got which piece, the territory went to Bavaria in 1805/06. The bishops kept their diocese. Everything else changed hands.
Sources: www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de; www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 4
The emblem
What the shield means.
A red wolf, up on its hind legs, on a silver field. It is not the city's own animal. Passau took it off the prince-bishopric's shield, which is a confident thing to do with the arms of the man you are arguing with. The wolf turns up as the town's own sign in a book of arms from around 1402, and by about 1460 nobody was reading it as the bishop's any more.
Sources: hdbg.eu
Emblem: Public domain — official coat of arms (Wikimedia Commons)
Three facts
Three things I know about this place.
People have been living on this peninsula for close to seven thousand years. The oldest traces are Middle Neolithic, roughly 4900 to 4500 BC, and somebody has been here on and off ever since.
Sources: www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 1
Two devastating fires, in 1662 and 1680, decided what the Old Town looks like now. Italian artists were called in to put the Dom and the bishops' buildings back together, and they brought the Italian late baroque with them. Building rules arrived at the same time: shingle roofs out, trough roofs behind raised fire walls in. That is why so many roofs here look flat from the lane.
Sources: www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 3; www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 4
Four lanes came through all of that with their medieval shape intact: Höllgasse, Steiningergasse, Kleine Messergasse and Pfaffengasse. Houses packed tight, and courtyards hiding behind them, some with galleries. All four are in this Old Town.
Sources: www.geodaten.bayern.de p. 4
Street words
What the names on the signs mean.
- Gasse
- A lane, and the ordinary word for a street here. Count the names ending in -gasse and you have most of the Old Town.
- Gäßchen
- The same thing, smaller. Passau also says Gassl and Gaßl for it, which is the same shrug in Bavarian.
- Stiege
- A stair that counts as a street. Ballhausstiege, Hofstiege, Schlosserstiege, Wallfahrtsstiege. Steps have dots on them too.
- Lände
- The bank where boats tied up and unloaded. Obere and Untere Donaulände are the two long ones along the water.
- Winkel
- A corner you cannot walk through. Heuwinkel, Klosterwinkel, Bratfischwinkel: go in, look, come back out.
- Ort
- Not the ordinary word for a place. Here it means the point, the sharp eastern end of the peninsula. Ort, and Ortspitze beyond it.
The size of it
Walk it in a day: Passau in numbers.
Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.
- 81streets
- 896dots
- 14.4km of street
- 18.3km on foot
- 5.2hours 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.