Rothenburg ob der Tauber is one of the highlights of Germany’s famed Romantic Road, which is extremely popular with Asian tourists, particularly the Japanese.
Rothenburg ob der Tauber’s popularity is visibly thanks to the perfectly preserved medieval core. The city walls still completely encircle the town, offering an interesting insight into the defensive system of German towns during the time of the Holy Roman Empire. Once you enter the old town through one of the impressive gates, you will surely feel like being transported back in time.
Rothenburg ob der Tauber was once a major town, having been designated a Free Imperial City in the Holy Roman Empire. This explains the abundance of impressive architecture for a relatively remote and isolated town in present-day Germany. Indeed, the town’s fortunes were reversed during the Thirty Year’s War in the 17th century, which mainly took place in what is today’s Germany and what developed into a proxy war between the Protestant powers like Sweden and the Netherlands on one hand and the Catholic Powers like France and the Vatican on the other. The final blow to the town came in the form of the bubonic plague towards the end of the same century. Rothenburg on der Tauber never fully recovered from the disastrous 17th century, and so we now find a town where time seems to have been frozen…
Les Flâneries 