A medieval city, walled and moated, with crow-step rooftops, cathedral spires, meistersingers, bridges and dwellings five centuries old, Nuremberg opens its doors to connoisseurs of music, art and architecture as well as friends of astute architectural restoration.
It is also favored by gastronomes, winebibbers, photography buffs, walkers and all those travelers who cherish romantic notions about what a walled city should look like.
Nuremberg is many other things. It is a place remembered from a childhood classic, ”The Nuremberg Stove” (there are still some of these great tiled stoves around). It is haunted by the melodies of the songs of shoemaker-composer Hans Sachs, immortalized by Wagner in ”Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.”
Behind four central upstairs windows in a rather plain building is the big room where the Nuremberg trials of war criminals took place. The Third Reich headquarters for Nuremberg scarcely gets a second look from tourists. It houses a school for girls. To the southeast of the city is Dutendteich and the stadium where Hitler held his youth rallies. Some of the buildings have been dismantled, but the reviewing stand is there.
In the 1940s, Old Town lost about 2,800 buildings. By salvaging the materials wherever possible, and letting some less worthy structures go, Nurembergians have recaptured the haphazard but harmonious charm of their city, making use of the native sandstone wherever possible.
The peaked customs house with its unusual timbering and rows of dormers set into the vast slanted roof, and the seven-storied pale wedding-cake facade called the toy museum, built as the home of a wealthy medieval citizen, are folk-beautiful in their enduring way, as is the well-preserved square around the house of the artist Albrecht Durer of the period 1450.
Before the 30 Years War, Nuremberg was a center of art and culture. It has been famous for toys and ”baubles” and its international Toy Fair since the 15th Century. In the machine age it became a center of iron and steel manufacture, the reason for its being bombed in World War II.
But the busy Konigstrasse still bisects a city rich in the Gothic, medieval and baroque building traditions. Building and rebuilding cautiously, Nurembergians have avoided rushing into the errors of reconstruction.
It is the Old City which makes Nuremberg a traveler`s city, enclosed by a mellow wall, deep as a room, thickwalled enough to have been an air raid shelter. It was completed in 1452 with 128 massive towers and four main gates. The moat, added 50 years later, is a grassy place loved by motorbikers.
The German National Museum tells the story from prehistoric times to the 19th Century with up-to-date museum techniques. It is open 9 to 5, free on Sundays, holidays and Thursday evenings.
Visiting a few of the city`s restored buildings, new shops and restaurants is the best way to experience this city. The immensely solid and patrician Renaissance residence known as Tucherschlosschen, filled with historic furniture, is open for guided tours on weekday afternoons and at 10 and 11 a.m. Sundays. The home is closed on Saturdays. There are many others.
The Weissergasse and the Adlerstrasse are streets of tall, handsome, centuries-old structures beautifully restored and immaculately kept. Courtyards and staircases invite the visitor to linger for a closer look at details. In season window boxes are a sideshow of blooms against the ancient walls.
You can have lunch in a vast inner room of the brooding Heliggeistspial, the Hospital of the Holy Ghost, overlooking the Pegnitz River. The food is not exceptional, but the artistry is enchanting, and the people-watching can be done in comfort.
Sightseeing tours and the tourism offices on the Konigstrasse provide maps of the Sebald City, around the Gothic-Romanesque cathedral of St. Sebald, which includes the castle and the Marketplatz with the 14th-Century Schoner Brunnen and the Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady (1361-1379).
On the other side of the Konigstrasse is the Gothic twin-towered St. Lorenz, or Lorenz City.
The Rathaus, or town hall, a complex of Gothic and Renaissance with two internal courtyards, is a conglomeration of medieval buildings. The oldest part dates back to the 14th Century, with its walls of warm rough-cast brick, steep decorated gable roof and tracery windows. The adjoining Rathausstube, or restaurant, with its mullioned east facade (1514) and its three rooftop pavilions, is a starting place for sightseers on foot.
The castle of Henry III, duke of Bavaria about 1040, remains the center of Nuremberg, with its pentagonal tower and lookout tower and the royal stables, which once held hundreds of horses during the imperial gatherings and now house a youth hostel.
Its contours partly hidden by dense trees, the weatherworn castle with its loggia-circled double chapel, imperial hall, knights hall and steep declivities provides an excellent view of the city from several vantage points. It is open to visitors, and admission is four deutschmarks, less for children and groups.
One way to approach the castle (or just about anything in Old Town) is the Beautiful Fountain (its true name) on the square in front of the Frauenkirche. At noon each day the square is packed with admirers of glockenspiels and automated clock figures. On the church clock, richly engraved, the doll-like figures of the seven elector princes of the Holy Roman Empire come out and pay homage to Emperor Charles IV. Long ago the crown jewels were displayed there.
Nuremberg outdid itself in medieval to rococco churches, pre-Reformation and those built or re-created after the time of Martin Luther.
Nuremberg is a city where the ”konzerte” is a part of daily life. Churches as well as concert halls post a list of the day`s offerings from Bach, Brahms and Frescobaldi to ”lieder.” The works of Oliver Messiaen and other contemporary composers are available as well as works written for the klavier. Restaurant music includes visiting performers from Munich and Berlin, and the works of Hans Sachs make up many an evening in ”klosterhof” or
”spielplatz.”
Nuremberg, true to tradition, is a center for avant-garde graphics and abstract art, along with a show of woodcuts and engravings put together by medieval scholars. Retrospectives of modern artists are included in the lists of museum and gallery attractions.
In the midst of a city of a half-million people, the mosaic of rooftops and spires of the medieval city remains utterly accessible, much of it within the scope of walking tours and the rest available to travelers by car or motorcoach. Guidebooks in English are available at conveniently located tourist bureaus.
