Where to Stay in Nuremberg, Bavaria

What is Nuremberg known for?

Nuremberg is the largest city in Franconia and the second largest in Bavaria, and its old town still sits inside its walls. Nuremberg Castle holds the high ground. Albrecht Dürer's House carries the name of the painter who took the city's reputation abroad, the Germanisches Nationalmuseum gathered German art and craft into one collection, and the Nuremberg Toy Museum keeps the trade the place was known for long before either of them.

The Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds deals with the other reason the name travelled.

What are the main landmarks in Nuremberg?

Nuremberg's landmarks are mostly still standing where they were first put. Nuremberg Castle sits above the roofs. The Tiergärtnertor opens the wall, and the Weißer Turm, the Henkerturm and the Schuldturm are three more of the towers that wall still carries.

St. Sebaldus and St. Lawrence divide the old town between them. Albrecht Dürer's House, the Nassauer Haus and the Hans-Sachs-Denkmal hold three Nuremberg names in stone, while the Frauenkirche faces the market square and St. Egidien keeps its own quarter.

What is the history of Nuremberg?

Nuremberg grew under a castle and behind a wall, and it kept both. Nuremberg Castle held the high rock, and the town below it became the making and trading place of Franconia. The wall came next.

Gates and towers went up along it, the Tiergärtnertor among them, and the Weißer Turm, the Henkerturm and the Schuldturm still mark the line it took. Craft made the money. Albrecht Dürer's House carries the name of a painter who worked inside these walls, the Hans-Sachs-Denkmal carries a poet's, and the toy trade recorded in the Nuremberg Toy Museum outlasted them both.

The Nuremberg Charterhouse marks the monastic side of the same centuries, and the Katharinenkirche marks another. Then the twentieth century took the city for its own purposes. The Nazi party held its rallies on open ground beyond the old town, and the Documentation Center Nazi Party Rally Grounds now stands there and explains what was done on it.

The Synagogue monument Nuremberg marks what was destroyed. War came close enough that the art was moved underground into the Historischer Kunstbunker, and a great deal of what stands inside the wall was put back afterwards. The Nuremberg Transport Museum keeps the rail half of the record.

Where is Nuremberg?

Nuremberg stands on the Pegnitz in Bavaria, at the middle of Franconia rather than at its edge. The river crosses the old town. The Main-Danube Canal passes the city as well, tying together the two river systems it is named for and putting Nuremberg on a through route that has nothing to do with the Pegnitz.

Fürth, Erlangen and Schwabach have grown into one built-up area with it. The Nuremberg Metropolitan Region reaches further still, out as far as Bamberg.

What is the climate of Nuremberg?

Nuremberg sits inland in the temperate band, with no sea near enough to soften it and the whole of Franconia around it. The seasons arrive properly here. Summer heat settles into the Pegnitz valley and stays there, winter is cold in the way an inland winter is cold, and the months on either side of those two are the ones that suit a day spent walking the wall.

How do you get to Nuremberg?

Nuremberg is a junction before it is a destination. The Nuremberg Metropolitan Region pulls rail and road in from Bamberg, Ansbach and the rest of Franconia, and the Main-Danube Canal takes the freight that travels by neither. Fürth is next door.

The built-up area carries on into Erlangen and Schwabach without a real break, so a bed in any of them is still a short ride from the wall, and the Nuremberg Transport Museum keeps the record of the rail side of it.