selenak

Since I'm spending the weekend with the Aged Parents, and since the sun finally graces us with its presence again, I wandered through my beautiful hometown with my trusty camera in my hand, setting out to convince Certain Friends, and indeed everyone reading this that if they visit Germany, they should come here. As for fellow Germans, if you haven't already been here, what's stopping you? Behold this completely biased view of the prettiest town in Germany.

Let's start with the cathedral (a mixture of the Romanic and Gothic style), the former episcopal residence (Baroque) and Alte Hofhaltung (Renaissance imperial residence when the Emperor was in town), which all happen to be on the same square. This is them at a distance:

Here we're entering the square:

The cathedral:

Next to the cathedral, the Alte Hofhaltung starts:

These days, the interior courtyard is used for summer theatre festivals. Which is why I saw Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, Goethe's Faust, Shaw's St. Joan and Schiller's Wallenstein first played before this background:

Sitting there:

Bamberg used to be the seat of a prince bishop until Napoleon and secularization arrived. (At which point it ceased to be a principality, but it's still an arch diocesis.) The bishops weren't content to live in the Alte Hofhaltung, oh no. They built themselves this residence:

Used these days to receive guests of state (read: American presidents when they show up, which Bill Clinton did), and for the university library. (The current arch bishop lives somewhat further up the road.)

Now you've seen all the buildings on the square, let's go inside the cathedral:

The most famous sights inside our cathedral are:

- the tomb for Heinrich II and his wife Kunigunde, both canonized (I don't think another imperial couple managed that one), made by Tilman Riemenschneider:

There is one side devoted to legends about the Empress Kunigunde. The two scenes here show one miracle when she was accused of adultery by a courtier and in the legend walked on hot iron to prove her innocence, and another when the cathedral was built, and one of the workers stole from the others, which she discovered:

On the other side, there are scenes depicting legends about the Emperor Heinrich:

Also famous is the altar made by Veit Stoß. It was odd to see another one made by him in Krakow last year after growing up with this one:

Then there is the statue which regularly disappoints the tourists because for some reason they always imagine it bigger. Being a medieval statue, it's comparatively small, but certainly beautiful. The "Bamberger Reiter" (Equestrian of Bamberg):

And finally another beautiful statue which also, sadly, documents medieval antijudaism, for she's called "Synagoga" and supposed to symbolize the Jewish faith, and that's why they depicted her blind and the Thora she's carrying broken:

Outside again for a breath of fresh air. Behind the residence, there's the rosegarden, from which you can see the roofs of the old city centre and St. Michael's:

Someone who couldn't be reconciled to life by the beauty of the view was the Napoleonic marshal Berthier, who jumped from there to his death:

(That photo was taken for

amenirdis.)

Meanwhile, the citizens of Bamberg walked through these streets:

Had a beer in this most famous of medieval Bamberg pubs, the Schlenkerla (I have no idea what the beer is like, since I don't drink any, but it's pretty famous; ask

shezan about the taste, since I brought here there:

Soon, you reach the old city hall, which is on a bridge, as it was supposed to be beween the clerical and the secular part of the city:

Still the old city hall, only the backside:

Speaking of bridges, we have a lot of those. Here's the view to the old miller's quarter:

Behind the millers' quarter used to be the Jewish quarter. One of the most famous Jewish Bambergians, and also one of the richest, was Philip Böttinger, who had this town residence built for himself:

He also built a water palace, where we have different artists residing every year these days, the Concordia:

Between the bridges and the river and the canal, Bambergians decided to call one quarter of the town Little Venice.

We even have our very own gondolas and gondolieri:

The best thing is that as opposed to towns which shall remain Rothenburg, ours is not some kind of dead Disneyland for tourists. These houses aren't museums, they're normal residences, like this one: