Bamberg

It took us two hours to go by bus from Weimar to Bamberg and as we had seats up top in a double decker bus we had a great view.  We started off by travelling through rolling hills with grain fields and wind turbines were a common sight.  About half way into the journey the hills got bigger and were covered in forest.  We crossed over many viaducts and went through quite a few tunnels.  The longest tunnel was 7.9 kilometres so it was a while before we saw the light at the end of that one!

Bamberg has a well preserved historic downtown area and its seven hills are each crowned with a church.  We climbed three of the hills and visited two of the churches.

The most impressive looking of the churches was the former Benedictine abbey of St Michael's.  The first abbey church was built there in about 1015 and the present one was consecrated in 1121 but it had major rebuilding work after a fire in 1610  From 1696  a baroque façade was added. From the downtown area the abbey dominates the skyline. 

Because of safety renovations we could only visit the grounds but I would have liked to see the church as its ceiling has paintings of over 570 different herbs and flowers.  I had to be satisfied with seeing a few photos.  We did have lovely views of the city from the abbey grounds.

The early 11th-century Bamberg Cathedral sits on another hill and inside it was plain in comparison with more modern cathedrals we have seen.

Opposite the cathedral is the 'New Residence’ another building with several periods of construction.  We visited a wing added from 1568 and baroque wings added from 1697 - 1703.  In these times the head of the church was also the city ruler and he lived like a prince.  The residence was like a palace in both size and in interior decoration.

The architecture detail (cornice, balustrade etc) is all painted . In reality from the wall to the ceiling it's a curved surface.

The third hill we climbed was to go to a brewery restaurant that sells the local smoked beer (rauchbier), this place had been recommended to us.  When we got there we found it was closed (on a Monday) so had to settle for the beer downtown along with the local speciality of pigs knuckle with a potato dumpling.

The Old Town Hall is in the middle of a bridge and has frescoes on the walls depicting the (tall) tale of how the building came to be built on the island.  A town hall has been located here as far back as 1386 and the existing structure was built between 1744-1756.

Near the town hall bridge was Little Venice with its quaint old fishermen's houses.

In the cities we have visited there are many cycleways along the streets and bikes are common.

Cycleway between the footpath and the parked cars

Secure parking at the train station