Schwäbisch Hall - small town on the slopes of the valley

Welcome to Schwäbisch Hall

Schwäbisch Hall is a medium sized town in Southern Germany. It belongs to the province: Baden-Wurttemberg. The town includes mixture of old and modern buildings, but the old ones are very well preserved and picturesquely situated at the banks of the Kocher river. The river is situated in a valley, therefore the old town is located on the valley slopes, which gives even nicer impression. 

Can be misleadingly considered as the most famous view of Rothenburg

Second Rothenburg?

The climate inside the old town is very comparable to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, which is considered to be one of the most famous medieval towns in the World. What differs the towns the most is the landform (Rothenburg is located almost on the equal level). Buildings built on the slopes has two completely different ground floors and this makes them look even more cute - the masterpiece in building on the slopes we saw in Frias. On the other hand, only the residual parts of the town walls are preserved in Schwäbisch Hall. In Germany there are only three towns, which are surrounded by medieval city walls till this day, they are: Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Dinkelsbühl and Nordlingen.

Main square

St. Michael's church located at main square of Schwäbisch Hall

Level difference seen on the main square of Schwäbisch Hall

The main square in Schwäbisch Hall is very typical for medieval town. There are located: Town Hall, Church, some beautiful buildings and between them there is huge place. Although, we called it 'typical' it looks very nice and cozy.

Town Hall of Schwäbisch Hall

Old town streets

Every street you would go from the main square you will feel the medieval climate. The streets are more narrow then in similar towns, because of the slopes. It is also very common that the buildings are expanding looking at following higher floors. 

Street in the old town #1

Street in the old town #2

The medieval art was really developed in this region, which also testifies of the richness of the town in the past. There are more than few richly decorated portals (we cannot name it longed doors), which example you can see below. 

Schwäbian little Venice

Schwäbian little Venice

We already got used to compare any town which is nice and has some water in between to Venice. Therefore, we will also point it out here, there are three small islands connected with wooden or stone bridges, where nowadays people spend free time enjoying the regional beer.

Small advertisement, the beer was good - as always, we took the wheat one:)

Dragons in the city

Dragon holding the signboard

During the walk through the town we observed several likenesses of dragons, not only on old-styled signboards, but also in gargoyles. But we have no ides if the dragons has any special meaning for the town's history.

Dragon's head as a gargoyles

Modern art

We are not the artists or any Art experts, but these extraordinary handrails also caught our attention.

Handrail part 1

Handrail part 2

Grosscomburg

View on the monastery from the entry road

Driving or walking though the Schwäbisch Hall you can see (a little further) the small 'castle' on the hill. In fact this is the benedictine monastery which was built even before the town. The monastery is well fortified and it was used not only as place of prayer but also as a defense fortress. It is definitely worth to visit it, while doing the trip to Schwäbisch Hall. 

Gate to the monastery

View on the courtyard form the monastery walls

All mentioned places you can easily find on a map below:

That's all for today...

...we hope you enjoyed!

Read more »

Hohenzollern castle - perfectly designed fortress

The Hohenzollern castle is beautifully placed on a peak of the Hohenzollern mountain (called also Zollerberg or shorter Zollern) between two towns: Bisingen and Hechingen. It can be seen even from tens of kilometers, as it rises above a vast plain. 

A brief story:

Such located hill was in the past really good lookout place. So it was chosen for perfect place to built a castle very early: the first castle was built there somewhere in XI century. From very beginning it was a headquarters of Hohenzollern family. The first castle survived till 1423, when after year-long battle it was completely destroyed. It didn't take long to built the second castle, which raised in next 30 years. Due to many wars and changes of occupiers, castle felt into ruin (beginning of XIX century). As previously, the castle was built again:) This time, then thanks to the Fiedrich Wilhelm IV king of Prussia, who wanted to to see the castle of his predecessors in stately way. And it's how it looks today (we just hope that nobody will destroy it again):

Entering the castle.

After we climbed through the last 1/3 of the hill, we saw the beautiful gate... Unfortunately, the are no good views on the castle from it's surroundings:(  ...as it turned out it was not a single gate...

The entrance to the castle for us was similar to multi-level city or gallery parkings where you have to drive in spiral to reach the next levels. We passed two tunnels and three gates also including bascule bridge. Inside the way for 'cars', horses, groups of people etc. was smaller, also round, staircase.

Finally the last gate (above on the left)... and here we are! Lets enter the courtyard.

Castles inner courtyard is rather small surrounded by buildings, there is also outer courtyard with gardens around the castle, from which you can enjoy really nice views. 

View on the courtyard from castle's rooms

Sightseeing.

The castle can be easily accessed by cars. In a two thirds of a mountain there are located car parks (2 euro for entrance) which are located behind the watchtower and just next to the castle's office. As in Neuschwanstein to access the castle you have to buy tickets there. The tours are available in German and sometimes in English, so if you want to participate in an English tour you should book it before. As we didn't know it before and there were participated in German language tour:) The tour costs 10 euro per students and 1 or 2 euro more per an adult. All important information you will find on the official website of the castle. 

Unfortunately, as always in such monuments we could not take any pictures inside:(

Tip: if you just want to walk around the castle and see the courtyard, come after opening hours. Then, maybe you have no chance to use of the restaurant or to have a guided tour through the castle's rooms but you can access courtyard for free, which normally costs 7 euro per an adult. Which is a great benefit:)

The entrance to the castles rooms leads through the room, which painted walls shows the Hohenzollern family tree. During sightseeing of this hall (below on the right), the guide told us about medieval notation of "4", which we already shared with you in our previous post about Fussen.

In the castle there is secret path under the buildings connecting two: outer and inner courtyards (above on the left). In the castle's mountain there are many, many more tunnels and still some of them haven't been explored, so nobody know where they lead. They are also associated with a legend about White Lady, who was predicting the death of members of the Hohenzollern family. The legend is available here.

Pictures are allowed to be taken in two churches: evangelic (above on the right) and catholic (above on the left). Two churches are present because of the reformation and some members of the family represents one part of the religion and some others. Above there are photos from the catholic chapel. 

That's all for today. See you next time:)

Read more »