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Cruised all night, a few bumpy dockings and Pete was sick through the night. We arrived in Wurzburg at around 7am. It is the capital of Lower Franconia and is one of the loveliest baroque cities in the country and became famous as the centre of Franconian wine production. Besides those many tourists heading for the Romantic Road from here, 25.000 students enjoy the lively atmosphere of that town, which is beautifully embedded in the valley of the Main River, surrounded by wine-covered hills.
The attractions of Wurzburg are countless and it is hardly to believe, that 90 persent of the city were devastated in a 20 minutes lasting raid in World War 2nd, March 1945. In a miraculous rebuilding program nearly every major structure has been restored as well as the World Heritage Wurzburg Residence, which suffered serious damage.
A famous landmark is the mighty fortress Festung Marienberg and the pilgrimage church Käppele, both idyllic spots on a hill above the town.
We boarded a bus at 8am and visited the Wurzburg Residence. The former residence of the Würzburg prince-bishops is one of the most important baroque palaces in Europe and today it is on UNESCO's World Heritage list. Originally designed for Prince-Bishop Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn by the then young and unknown architect Balthasar Neumann, it took sixty years to complete; the shell of the palace was built from 1720 to 1744 and the interior finished in 1780. Neumann's world-famous staircase, roofed by an unsupported vault, was decorated in 1752/53 by the Venetian Giovanni Battista Tiepolo with a ceiling fresco representing the four continents. The painting, measuring 18 x 30 metres, is one of the largest frescos ever created. The magnificent sequence of rooms begins with the vestibule and Garden Hall and continues via the staircase and White Hall to the Imperial Hall, also with frescos by Tiepolo. The vaulting of these rooms even withstood the devastating fire of 1945, while the ceilings and floors of the Imperial Apartments flanking the Imperial Hall were destroyed. The furnishings and wall panelling had been removed beforehand, enabling the rooms to be reconstructed.
Restoration was completed in 1987 with the reopening of the Mirror Cabinet. There is a total of over 40 palace rooms to visit, with a rich array of furniture, tapestries, paintings and other 18th century treasures. The Court Chapel, entered separately from the southern front yard, is one of the finest examples of religious art in Würzburg. The State Gallery contains Venetian art from the 17th and 18th centuries (Branch of the Bavarian State Galleries).
A walk in the Würzburg Court Garden was a delight. The water basin encircled by yew trees clipped into the shape of cones forms the present centre of the South Garden. In front of the magnificent east façade is a terraced garden decorated with groups of puttos by Johann Peter Wagner.
The Würzburg witch trials, which took place in Germany in 1626-1631, is one of the biggest mass-trials and mass-executions seen in Europe during the Thirty Years War; 157 men, women and children in the city of Würzburg are confirmed to have been burned alive at the stake; 219 are estimated to have been executed in the city proper, and an estimated 900 were killed in the entire Prince-Bishopric.
The Würzburg witch trial is among the largest among the Witch trials in the Early Modern period, The Church of Our Lady (Marienkapelle), outside of which the burnings are believed to have taken place.
After enjoying the beautiful gardens we reboarded our bus and headed to Rothenburg which is a fortified town. During WW11 in 1945 bombs were dropped over Rothenburg by 16 planes, killing 39 people and destroying 306 houses, six public buildings, nine watchtowers and over 2000 feet of the wall. After the war, the residents of the city quickly repaired the bombing damage. Donations for the rebuilding were received from all over the world. The rebuild walls feature commemorative bricks with donor names. This town had cobbled stone streets, with little crooked buildings selling souvenirs or operating as cafesor bars. There were a lot of christmas decoration shops also. One shop had a bear on a chair blowing bubbles to attract attention. You could walk along the top of the walls and through the towers. There was a museum of torture with dunking chairs, racks etc. St Jacobs Church was very impressive with two altars and two very tall towers. For lunch we had a schneeballen (made from shortcrust pastry deriving its name from round ball-like shape with a diameter of about eight to ten centimeters and the traditional decoration with confectioner's sugar (too sweet for me) tried a local sausage with sauerkraut and had a pretzel from the bakery. We walked around the main square and did some souvenir shopping before reboarding the bus at 3.30pm to meet up with our boat.
Tonight is it Joke night, whatever that means and we are heading to Bamburg.
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