September 5, 2021

Regansburg, Germany

The city of Regensburg was founded as an imperial Roman river fort and has a wonderful medieval center to it's old city.

The Royal Villa in Regensburg is in the east of the old town and was built as a summer residence from 1854 to 1856 on behalf of the Bavarian King Maximilian II.  Our long boat "parked" on the Danube at this location  and this was out our view 1st thing in the morning....

Here is one of the entrance gates to the old town

The following pictures show some of the original stones in the walls that were built by the Romans.  I thought they did a wonderfully creative way of showing the old stones while reconstructing the fortress walls.  The stones are believed to be from the build in 179 AD

Between 1135 and 1146, the Stone Bridge across the Danube was built at Regensburg. This bridge opened major international trade routes between northern Europe and Venice, and this began Regensburg's golden age as a residence of wealthy trading families

.

Arch entrance to the bridge

Peering over the bridge (view and supports)

The Dom (Cathedral) is an example of pure German Gothic architecture and was created in 1869.  There was a lot of reconstruction going on around this church in the center of the old town and it was difficult to get a full picture, but the defining design element of Gothic architecture is the pointed arch. This use of the pointed arch in turn led to the development of the pointed rib vault and flying buttresses, combined with elaborate tracery and stained glass windows.  To me it was a very busy style with small detail after small detail.

Because of it's location on the trade route, Regensburg had many wealthy merchants.  You could typically tell their homes as they would build them with the right hand side having a much larger tower than the rest of their homes.  Here are a couple of pictures of homes with those exaggerated right sides.  The more stories in the tower, the wealthier the merchant.  (Bragging rights, I guess).See if you can guess who was the wealthiest....or who thought they were the wealthiest...trade diminished on these trade routes when the new world started attracting merchants and enticing them to take their wares over seas and the wealth of these merchants decreased.