Germany’s Romantic Road

Germany’s ‘Romantic Road’ or Romantische Straße, could be one of the least accurately named drives in Europe. More a drive through history than a drive down lover’s lane, it nevertheless provides a fascinating back story to go with its often picturesque backdrops.

It opens with a Dance of Death and wanders past a Crime Museum, a hospice for the destitute and several dungeons. It ends at a decadent bishop’s palace whose ceiling is painted with nymphs entangled in an unfortunate outbreak of breast-baring wardrobe malfunctions. Only the best PR spin could call this route romantic.

Although the Romantic Road was launched in the 1950s to promote tourism, the history here remains rough-and-tumble. You’ll discover that Europe in the Middle Ages wasn’t a knightly romance but rather a story of warfare, turbulent change and terrible events. Never fear, though. This drive has ample charms and charming stereotypes too – ruined castles, prettily painted houses and old taverns to name a few.

Running for some 300 kilometres between Füssen and Würzburg in southwest Germany, the Romantic Road follows the old north-south trading routes between German and Italian city-states. Nearby Frankfurt and Munich make it easy to get to, but the region remains a little old-fashioned and you’ll seldom be sharing the tarmac with tour coaches.

The only tourist merry-go-round is at famous Neuschwanstein Castle, a nineteenth-century reimagining of the Middle Ages by Bavarian king Ludwig II. Ludwig’s life was no fairy tale, however, as he was haunted by madness and eventually drowned in mysterious circumstances in an alpine lake.

Neuschwanstein is an unmissable folly set against the snow peaks of the Bavarian Alps, but the Romantic Road technically starts four kilometres away at Füssen, the first of its well-preserved old towns, topped by a castle.

Many Neuschwanstein Castle visitors miss it, but Füssen is a joyous concoction of pastel-painted houses, pepper-pot towers and spooky Gothic chapels; in one you’ll find the macabre Dance of Death fresco that showcases medieval fears and misfortunes. The arcaded Market Hall that was once Füssen’s economic heartbeat now dishes up food to tourists and local workers alike.

Skirting west of Munich, the Romantic Road leads to Landsberg, which has another pretty old town and riverside beer gardens that beckon for lunch. Onwards lies much bigger Augsburg, formerly a powerful independent bishopric and important commercial centre. The Fugger banking family established a hospice in Augsburg in 1521 that still houses the underprivileged, and which remains one of the city’s quaint historical sights. Thanks to its university and modern businesses however, Augsburg has an agreeable contemporary buzz and excellent restaurants.

Continue north from Augsburg and you’ll discover the very young Danube River. At Donauwörth its first navigable stretch is protected by a whopping fortress insolent with battlements, a reminder that warfare rather than romance was the preoccupation of the bad old days.

Further on you’ll find Dinkelsbühl on the modest Wörnitz River. It’s one of several free imperial cities that once answered directly to the Holy Roman Emperor but otherwise conducted its own affairs and got rich on trade.

The marketplace, centre of medieval life and overlooked by a fine Gothic church, is now filled with café tables served by waitresses in flounced skirts and white aprons. Walk the intact town walls above streets of half-timbered houses and you’ll smell the local speciality, gingerbread, wafting from bakeries below.

From here you drive across farmland and cross small rivers where local fisherman catch trout and perch before arriving at Rothenburg ob der Tauber, perched like a movie set on a bluff above the modest Tauber River, whose valley is bright yellow with rapeseed and pegged with vines.

Rothenburg had its golden day in the fourteenth century thanks to its wine, wool and livestock trade. You get all the happy historical clichés in this superbly preserved medieval town – cobbled squares, alleys of leaning wooden houses, clock towers, fountains laden with geraniums, bakeries opulent with cream cakes.

A visit to the Medieval Crime Museum, with its thumb screws and masks of shame for cheating bakers, might however adjust your mindset. More lightly entertaining is an evening tour with a costumed nightwatchman who entertains with tales of plagues, sieges and thievery.

You’re now amid the pretty landscapes of the ancient duchy of Franconia, better known these days as Bavaria’s only wine region, noted for dry whites that include the world’s best Silvaner.

If you haven’t overdone European palaces, your next stop might be Weikersheim, a late Renaissance masterpiece whose interior is encrusted with wood carving and a menagerie of stuffed animal heads. Its manicured gardens, in which gnomes and stone beasts lurk, gradually dissolve into wooded hillsides.

There is however another palace to come at Würzburg, which is a corker. The seat of Würzburg’s former prince-bishops, modestly called the Residenz, is one of Europe’s best and most effervescent baroque marvels. Its grand pink-and-white staircase is topped with a vast fresco by Tiepolo depicting the four continents, but even that is outdone by the chapel, which has rock-candy pillars, flocks of dimpled cherubs, and a rapper’s excess of bling.

As you shuffle through the palace’s jewellery-box bedrooms, your disbelief is reflected in endless mirrors and gold leaf. Small wonder Europe erupted in reformations and revolutions, you might think. The tourist version of European history is seductive, but its darker realities give you plenty to ponder.

Würzburg, lovely and lively university town snug in the embrace of vine-clad hills, is where the Romantic Road ends. Above, a fanciful hilltop fortress looms. Below, the Main River flows, luring you onwards to more exploration.

Of course, undertaken in the right vehicle with the right company, just about any driving trip through Germany could be considered romantic, but the very much misnamed Romantische Straße certainly offers insights to the country of old, as well as an appealing snapshot current life in some of the less well known centres along the way.