Day 9: Regensburg

We started our tour of Regensburg on a cold, rainy morning. The Danube is noticeably narrower here, closer to the source of the river. There’s an old stone bridge over the river, with several arches in it for ships to pass beneath. But they’re not very big – and so this bridge is a barrier to navigation for many ships – including ours. Our Viking cruise ship can’t get under this bridge. To get to Nuremberg, our ship has to use the canal system. So it’s heading north toward Nuremberg while we tour Regensburg on foot and take our later tour to the Danube Narrows.

All tour group participants are offered a huge red umbrella as they leave the ship. So Viking tour groups have a rather distinctive appearance when it rains.

Regensburg is a bigger city than any of the others we’ve visited since Vienna. There is a lot to see here. On one street, our tour guide points out a tall medieval-era tower placed right alongside the other buildings in the shopping district. We’ve seen this kind of tower before – in San Gimignano! Really, it looks just like somebody went down to Italy, visited one of the hill towns in Tuscany, uprooted a tower, and brought it back. It turns out that this is nearly true, according to our guide. Tourists from Germany traveled to Italy, saw the towers, liked them, and decided to copy them.

Note the Tuscany-style medieval tower up ahead on the right side of the street. It doesn’t exactly fit the style of the other buildings!

Regensburg also copied the idea of the piazza. There’s a large town square (actually triangle-shaped) with a fountain in the middle. Restaurants around the square put tables and umbrellas out in the square. Unfortunately, with the rainy weather, everything was closed up while we were there.

It’s interesting to see how they copied the style of Tuscany. It’s too bad that they couldn’t copy the weather too!

Goliath is almost three stories tall!

David and Goliath are painted on the side of one building. The over-confident Goliath is relaxed, with his arm resting on one of the building’s window-frames. Apparently at one time there were quite a few of these story-paintings on various buildings in Regensburg, but this is the only one left. A nearby establishment’s identifying sign reads “Goliath Hotel-Cafe-Bar”.

Near the city hall is where they had the market stalls, and metal bars were fastened to an ancient-looking wall. At one time they served as standards for measurement of goods. One was foot-length, another arm-length, and the third was longer – maybe person-length?

Below are a few more pictures from our Regensburg city tour. Click to enlarge them.