ETR // Stage 36 // Dinkelsbühl - Augsburg

49°04'09.2"N 10°19'09.3"E
49.069218, 10.319238
Dinkelsbühl - Augsburg
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Distance

Dinkelsbühl - Augsburg
Radius 100 km
167 km

Highlights

Dinkelsbühl
Romantische Straße
Nördlingen
Ries Crater Museum
Bavarian Railway Museum
Nördlingen City Museum
City Wall Museum
Augenblick Museum
Donauwörth
Dillingen an der Donau
Augsburg Altstadt
Augsburg Water Management System

Riding Romantische Straße

Leaving Dinkelsbühl after a good breakfast we continue south along the Romantic Road (Romantische Straße) and continue our expedition through the many layers of deep history, heritage, culture, art, gastronomical and anthropological wonderland that this region of Bavaria contains. The route presents one great experience after the other, so don't be afraid to drift off into the backroads also, there are many small and beautiful villages lining both sides of the main ETR route through this vast cultural landscape. There is more than enough in this area for you to spend weeks or even months here, if you really wanted to delve deep into the local heritage, and plenty of nice hotels, B&B's and Gästhof at reasonable prices, when not in high-season.

A quintessentially German atmosphere

In medieval times, part of Romantische Straße was used as a trade route connecting the center of Germany to the south. 'The Romantic Road' was developed as a travel concept by travel agents in the 1950's to link a number of picturesque towns and castles together into one large route (sounds familiar?). They incorporated 460 kilometres of surface roads between Würzburg and Füssen in southern Germany, focusing on Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg.

Today, this region is experienced by many international travellers as having a "quintessentially German" atmosphere, landscape, scenery, culture and heritage. Towns and cities such as Nördlingen, Dinkelsbühl and Rothenburg ob der Tauber provide the ambience, as do castles such as Burg Harburg and the famous Schloss Hohenschwangau and Schloss Neuschwanstein, in Füssen. Keep heading south and you'll arrive in this fairytale landscape with your mouth hanging open.

The meteorite town of Nördlingen

Continue south, to spend some time in Nördlingen. The fortress town of Nördlingen was built inside a 15 million year old impact crater, the Nördlinger Ries. With a diameter of 25km the crater is a result of a meteorite that hit Earth at an estimated 70,000 km per hour, and left the entire area riddled with over 72,000 tons of micro-diamonds as the meteorite landed in a local graphite deposit. Some of the stone buildings in the town contain millions of tiny diamonds, all less than 0.2 mm in diameter.

The Ries Crater Museum is located in a well-preserved medieval tanners' house, and is definitely worth a visit to get a feel for how immense an impact the meteorite actually caused, and what the ramifications were for the local region. You can find several other good museums within a short walk, such as the Bavarian Railway Museum, the Nördlingen City Museum (Stadtmuseum), the City Wall Museum (Stadtmauermuseum) and Augenblick Museum. The fortress walls of Nördlingen are well preserved and you can take a walk around the interior/exterior if you have time.

From the Palaeolithic to The Merovingian

Archeological findings in the Ofnet Caves near the city show that the site of present-day Nördlingen was already inhabited in the late Palaeolithic period and human skulls excavated in the region have been dated to the 7th millennium BC. Ancient settlements have been excavated belonging to the Neolithic Linear Pottery culture, the Bronze Age Urnfield culture, and the Celtic Iron Age Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. The Alemannic people occupied the Nördlingen area during the 6th and 7th centuries C.E. during which time the region was gradually Christianized under the Merovingian dynasty.

Donauwörth and The Thirty Years War

Donauwörth grew up in the course of the 11th and 12th centuries under the protection of the castle of Mangoldstein, became in the 13th century a seat of Duke Ludwig II of Bavaria. The town received the freedom of the Holy Roman Empire in 1308, and maintained its position in spite of the encroachments of Bavaria till 1607. Donauwörth is historically important to Germany as the site of one of the incidents which led to the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). In 1606, the Lutheran majority barred the Catholic Church residents of the town from holding an annual Markus procession, causing a riot to break out. During the war, it was stormed by Gustavus Adolphus (1632) and captured by Ferdinand III (1634). And the carnage doesn't stop there..

Donauwörth was later the scene of the Battle of Schellenberg (or Battle of Donauwörth) on 2 July 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713). The battle was named after the village and high ground behind the city. John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, was marching from Flanders to Bavaria and arrived at the River Danube. The French decided to make a crossing of the Danube at Donauwörth, where they were surprised by Marlborough's troops and after heavy fighting were forced to pull back, and around 5,000 French troops drowned while trying to escape. This allowed Marlborough to capture Donauwörth and cross the Danube without major issues. Another battle of Donauwörth on the 7th of October 1805 heralded the start of Napoleon's Ulm campaign. Yet another with small man syndrome and an oversized ego.

Photos

Dave O'Byrne
European Touring Route AS

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Dillingen an der Donau, in Swabia

Crossing the Danube again we continue south to Dillingen an der Donau (Dillingen at the Danube). The Counts of Dillingen ruled from the 10th to the 13th century, and in 1258 the territory was turned over to the Prince Bishops of Augsburg. After the Reformation, the prince-bishops of Augsburg moved to the Catholic city of Dillingen and made it one of the centers of the Counter-Reformation. A university was established in 1549, but was closed by Napoleon in 1804. The philosophical and theological faculties still existed in the 20th century.

In 1800, during the War of the Second Coalition, the armies of the French First Republic, under command of Jean Victor Moreau, fought Habsburg regulars and Württemberg contingents, under the general command of Pál Kray. Kray had taken refuge in the fortress at Ulm; Moreau diverted his army to approach Ulm from the east and, after a small group of men captured a foothold on the northern bank of the Danube, his forces were able to move against the fortress on both sides of the river. At this battle, the culmination of the Danube Campaign of 1800, Moreau forced Kray to abandon Ulm and withdraw into eastern Bavaria.

Augsburg UNESCO World Heritage Site

Around 50km west of Bavarian capital Munich you can find Augsburg, a university town and regional seat of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben. In 2019, the Water Management System of Augsburg was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Founded in 15 BC by the Romans as Augusta Vindelicorum, it is named after the Roman emperor Augustus, and one of the oldest German cities, with a spectacular and impressive Altstadt (city centre). During The Reformation, it was the site of the 1530 Augsburg Confession, the 1555 Peace of Augsburg, and was a Free Imperial City from 1276 to 1803. The oldest part of the city and the southern quarters are set onto the northern foothills between the hills of Friedberg in the east, and the high hills of the west. Today, the Augsburg city forest and the Lech valley heaths rank among the most species-rich middle European habitats.

The Fuggerei, the oldest social housing complex in the world, was founded in 1513 by Jakob Fugger. At the end of the 16th century the witch hunts reached Augsburg, following the 1585-1588 plague epidemic. Southeast Germany was again shaken to the core by the 1589-1591 witch hunts. Following the 1592-1593 plague epidemic, cities in southeast Germany entered a period of inflation, marked by brutal witch hunts in urban areas, also. Good to see that as a species we've moved on from that level of morbid ignorance, rampant superstition and low intelligence - in most places, that is.