Bavaria · Old Town
Rothenburg ob der Tauber
A self-guided walking tour of the Rothenburg ob der Tauber Old Town, every street in one day.
Every street on the menu.
Every street in the Old Town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber 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
- 15.1 km
- Time
- about 4.5 hours
- Streets
- 74
- Steps
- 4 streets with steps
- Start point
- St. Jakob
- 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.
St. Jakob 1,500 points
The town church. I tried to take a bite and it was too tall. Go in and keep going until you have to climb. I am not telling you what waits there.
Franziskanerkirche 500 points
After 1805 this church housed the salt office, and only from 1871 was it a Protestant church. Salt first, prayers later: a building after my own heart. Walk round it first, then step in. I am not telling you what to look for.
Mittelalterliches Kriminalmuseum 500 points
A big old house on the Burggasse, full of other people's rules. Rules are not edible. I checked. I am not telling you what else is inside.
St.-Wolfgangs-Kirche 500 points
A church set into the town wall. It looks more like it is keeping watch than praying. Walk round it slowly. I am not telling you what is underneath.
Brunnen am Plönlein 250 points
A small corner the town is rather proud of. I came for the cobbles and stayed for the view. Stand still for once and look down both lanes. I am not telling you what you will recognise.
Rathausturm 250 points
The tall one over the market square. From the top the whole town lies spread out like a buffet. I counted the roofs instead of eating them. Almost. I am not telling you how many stairs.
Rödertor 250 points
One of the old gates in the wall, and one you can still climb. Look at it twice: once from inside the town, once from outside. I am not telling you why.
Stöberleinsturm 250 points
A tower in the wall wearing a hat far too pointy for its size. It also goes by a second name, and I am not telling you that one either.
Eating
Actual food.
Rothenburg cooks Franconian: a roast on Sundays, dumplings in two kinds, and rye bread from a wood-fired oven. The one thing the town calls its own is sweet, and round. I start with the dough. The lanes can wait. They are good at it.
Meat and fish
Two. The Schäufele is Franconia's Sunday roast. The Schneeball is the town's own pastry, and it sits here only because the register does not say what fat it is fried in. The dumplings that go with the roast are in the vegetarian list.
Rothenburger Schneeballen
Rothenburg's own pastry: strips of dough wound into a ball and fried. It was once a feast pastry for weddings and the Kirchweih. Now the bakers and confectioners sell it all year, with coffee or to take to whoever is hosting you. Snowballs in July. Nobody here finds that odd.
Vegetarian? Ask the bakery what fat it fries them in: the register only says fried pastry.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern (KErn / StMELF)
Fränkisches Schäufele
Pork shoulder roasted with its bone and rind, the rind baked to crackling. The name comes from the bone left on the plate, shaped like a little shovel. It is Franconia's classic Sunday roast, and the potato dumpling is its most important side. A meal that hands you a shovel when it is done. Thoughtful.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern (KErn / StMELF)
Vegetarian
Fränkische rohe Klöße
Potato dumplings made from raw potatoes. They were once called green dumplings, for their colour. The register's own advice: tear one apart before you eat it, so more sauce clings to it. Pulling food open on purpose. Finally, table manners I can follow.
On a Franconian plate they usually sit next to a roast. Ask what the sauce is made from.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern (KErn / StMELF)
Fränkische Mehlklöße
Flour dumplings: flour, eggs and salt. They go with roasts and with vegetables such as beans, and just as well as a sweet with preserved fruit, pears for one. Leftovers are fried up as Kloßbröckchen. One dough, two courses, nothing left over. I approve.
Ask for them with the beans or the pears. Next to a roast they get its sauce.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern (KErn / StMELF)
Fränkisches Holzofenbrot mit Quark
The Franconian way to eat the wood-fired rye loaf: a thick slice with quark or white cheese on it. At harvest the same bread went out to the threshers in the fields. Bread, cheese, a field to sit at the edge of. My idea of a well-planned afternoon.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern (KErn / StMELF)
Vegan
One. Of the Franconian dishes in the Bavarian register, the bread is the one whose recipe names nothing from an animal. The flour dumplings take egg, and the potato dumplings' entry does not say.
Fränkisches Holzofenbrot
Rye flour, water and salt, made into a sourdough. That is the register's whole list. The oven is fired with wood on its own baking floor, the embers are swept out, and the loaves bake for over an hour. Franconia has done it this way for several hundred years. Three ingredients and a few centuries. I call that a quick snack.
Sources: GenussErbe Bayern (KErn / StMELF)
Late breakfast
Ivy’s Deli where locals go
Spitalgasse 6
A small deli on the Spitalgasse, a few steps south of the Plönlein. It calls itself a brunch spot and serves breakfast and lunch until four. Humans gave the meal between breakfast and lunch a name of its own. I just call it the next one.
- Mon08:30–16:00
- Tueclosed
- Wedclosed
- Thu08:30–16:00
- Fri08:30–16:00
- Sat08:30–16:00
- Sun09:00–16:00
No guide has reviewed it yet. It is here because it is owner-run, not expensive and rated 4.0 or better by its guests.
Afternoon coffee
Time Coffee & Bistro where locals go
Galgengasse 8
A small coffee bar a few minutes from the Markt. No website, no brochure, just the name: coffee and bistro. A house that says so little about itself has to let the cup do the talking. I am listening.
- Mon09:00–17:00
- Tue09:00–17:00
- Wed09:00–17:00
- Thu09:00–17:00
- Fri09:00–17:00
- Sat09:00–17:00
- Sun09:00–17:00
No guide has reviewed it yet. It is here because it is owner-run, not expensive and rated 4.0 or better by its guests.
Dinner
Rothenburger Kartoffelstube where locals go
Ansbacher Straße 7
The potato kitchen of the Gasthof Rödertor, just outside the town wall by the gate it is named after. Its own page builds a Franconian menu around the potato, with Schäufele and Franconian sausages beside it, asparagus from a farm in Buhlsbach in spring and chanterelles in July and August. The owner runs it. A whole kitchen built around one vegetable: I respect the focus.
- Monclosed
- Tueclosed
- Wed17:30–21:00
- Thu17:30–21:00
- Fri17:30–21:00
- Sat11:30–14:00, 17:30–21:00
- Sun11:30–14:00, 17:30–20:30
Last orders a quarter of an hour before the kitchen closes.
No guide has reviewed it yet. It is here because it is owner-run, not expensive and rated 4.0 or better by its guests.
Zur Silbernen Kanne where locals go
Paradeisgasse 20
A small inn on the Paradeisgasse with a courtyard between the restaurant and the guest rooms. Its own page promises home-made food: Haxe, Nuremberg sausages, fish the house smokes itself, salads and skewers. The owner runs it. Smoking your own fish takes patience. I have plenty of that.
- Mon14:00–21:00
- Tue14:00–21:00
- Wedclosed
- Thu17:00–21:00
- Fri14:00–21:00
- Sat14:00–21:00
- Sun14:00–21:00
No guide has reviewed it yet. It is here because it is owner-run, not expensive and rated 4.0 or better by its guests.
Landsknechtstübchen where locals go
Galgengasse 21
A family-run Stube right behind the town wall, two minutes from the Markt by its own count. The menu reads like a Franconian Sunday: Sauerbraten with dumplings, Rahmbraten with home-made Spätzle, two Rostbratwürste on sauerkraut. The kitchen cooks from fresh produce and changes its seasonal dishes. Sausages on a bed of sauerkraut. Even dinner gets to lie down here.
- Mon12:00–20:00
- Tueclosed
- Wed12:00–20:00
- Thu12:00–20:00
- Fri12:00–20:00
- Sat12:00–20:00
- Sun12:00–20:00
Vegetarian? The potato pockets with cream cheese and herbs and the baked mushrooms on salad are the meatless dishes.
No guide has reviewed it yet. It is here because it is owner-run, not expensive and rated 4.0 or better by its guests.
Checked 7 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
- St. Jakob, Brunnen am Plönlein, Rödertor, Rathausturm, and back to the start
- Distance
- 1.5 km
- Time
- about 30 minutes of walking at a child's pace (3 km/h)
- Steps
- no streets with steps on the loop
- Playgrounds
- 2 near the loop
- Public toilets
- 2 near the loop, 1 with a changing table
- Drinking water
- 2 near the loop
- Ice cream
- 5 near the loop
Near the loop means within 150 m of it, counted from OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Name origin
Why it is called Rothenburg ob der Tauber.
Rothenburg takes its name from a castle that King Konrad III had built on a spur above the Tauber in 1142/44. The town's own history calls it the "Rote Burg", the red castle, and the arms read the name the same way by painting one. The name is on record from 1144; from 1349 it often gets a note on where it sits: ob der Tauber, above the Tauber. A red castle. Sounds like something I would not share.
Sources: Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Denkmalliste Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Baudenkmäler), Stand 29.09.2026, Nr. E-5-71-193-1, p. 1; Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, Markus Naser, Rothenburg, Reichsstadt (2017); Rothenburg Tourismus Service, Kurze Stadtgeschichte; Wikipedia (DE), Rothenburg ob der Tauber
Why here
Somebody stood here and decided.
On a rock plateau that drops steeply to the Tauber on three sides, close to a busy long-distance trade road from Würzburg to Augsburg, part of the way from the Rhineland to Italy. Cliffs on three sides: a plate with a rim, which I appreciate. In 1340 the road was allowed to move, and from then on it ran straight through the town.
Sources: Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Denkmalliste Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Baudenkmäler), Stand 29.09.2026, Nr. E-5-71-193-1, p. 1; Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, Markus Naser, Rothenburg, Reichsstadt (2017); Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Denkmalliste Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Baudenkmäler), Stand 29.09.2026, Nr. E-5-71-193-1, p. 2
Why then
When the first stone went down.
1142. King Konrad III got the spur in a swap, the bishop of Würzburg confirmed it that year, and a royal castle went up. The town grew beside it, one course at a time: burghers by 1227, a town seal by 1239, a council and arms by 1269, and on 15 May 1274 King Rudolf I granted it the freedom of an imperial city. Slow cooking. My kind of recipe.
Sources: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, Markus Naser, Rothenburg, Reichsstadt (2017); Frankenland 3/2016 (Frankenbund), Markus Naser, Rothenburg ob der Tauber; Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Denkmalliste Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Baudenkmäler), Stand 29.09.2026, Nr. E-5-71-193-1, p. 1
Who ruled
Everyone who thought they owned this.
I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.
- 1142–1274
A royal castle town. Konrad III, the first Staufer king, had a second, far larger castle built where the Burggarten is today, and the town grew up next to it.
Sources: Frankenland 3/2016 (Frankenbund), Markus Naser, Rothenburg ob der Tauber; Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, Markus Naser, Rothenburg, Reichsstadt (2017)
- 1274–1803
A free imperial city, answering to the Empire and nobody in between. Under Heinrich Toppler, mayor in the late 14th century, its land grew into the largest territory any imperial city had at the time, and from 1430 a ring of ditches and earth banks about 100 kilometres round guarded it.
Sources: Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Denkmalliste Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Baudenkmäler), Stand 29.09.2026, Nr. E-5-71-193-1, p. 1; Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Denkmalliste Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Baudenkmäler), Stand 29.09.2026, Nr. E-5-71-193-1, p. 2
- 1803–
Bavaria. When the imperial freedom ended in 1803, the town went to the Electorate of Bavaria, and it has been Bavarian ever since. Two centuries is nothing. I have had pebbles in my teeth longer.
Sources: Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Denkmalliste Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Baudenkmäler), Stand 29.09.2026, Nr. E-5-71-193-1, p. 2; Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, Markus Naser, Rothenburg, Reichsstadt (2017)
The emblem
What the shield means.
A red castle on silver: a wall with two crenellated towers, and between them a little red house with a pointed roof, standing on two posts. The castle says the town's name out loud. The little house is read as a sign that the regional court sat here. The castle itself came from the 1227 seal of the town's castle reeves, and the oldest seal that survives is from 1303. For a while the imperial eagle took the castle's place and carried it on a small shield on its breast; in the 19th century the castle stood alone again. Red walls, a pointy roof in the middle. Looks like gingerbread to me.
Sources: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, Markus Naser, Rothenburg, Reichsstadt (2017); www.hdbg.eu
Emblem: Public domain — official coat of arms (Wikimedia Commons)
Three facts
Three things I know about this place.
The town wall runs about four kilometres round the Old Town, and the Turmweg lets you follow it. Its wall walk rests on buttresses and corbels from the 14th century. Some of its stones carry names: people from Rothenburg and from all over the world who gave money for the wall. Four kilometres of crust, and no end to it. Fine by me.
Sources: Rothenburg Tourismus Service, Stadtmauer und Stadttore; Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Denkmalliste Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Baudenkmäler), Stand 29.09.2026, Nr. D-5-71-193-1, p. 6; Rothenburg Tourismus Service, Stadtmauerspende
Where the Staufer castle stood there is now a garden, the Burggarten. One building of the old castle is still there, from around 1200, with Romanesque twin windows. The rest is lawn. Lawn I respect. I do not eat it.
Sources: Rothenburg Tourismus Service, Burggarten; Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Denkmalliste Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Baudenkmäler), Stand 29.09.2026, Nr. D-5-71-193-2, p. 36
The Spital bastion is a double ring, three storeys high, wrapped around two inner courtyards, built in 1537/43 and 1610/16. A ring inside a ring. To me that is a doughnut with a second doughnut in it.
Street words
What the names on the signs mean.
- Gasse
- Lane. Most of the streets I eat here are one: narrow, cobbled, and named like the Burggasse.
- Tor
- Gate. The way through the wall, and the end of names like Rödertor.
- Turm
- Tower. The wall carries a lot of them, and most of their names end in -turm.
- Bastei
- Bastion. The thick, later bulwarks of the wall, like the Spital bastion.
The size of it
Walk it in a day: Rothenburg ob der Tauber in numbers.
Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.
- 74streets
- 890dots
- 12.5km of street
- 15.1km on foot
- 4.5hours 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.