Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
SWABIAN ALPS & AROUND
Tübingen
07071 / POP 88,360
Liberal students and deeply traditional
Burschenschaften
(fraternities) singing ditties for
beloved Germania, eco-warriors, artists and punks - all have a soft spot for this bewitch-
ingly pretty Swabian city, where cobbled lanes lined with half-timbered town houses twist
up to a turreted castle. It was here that Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, lectured
theology in the late 1960s; and here that Friedrich Hölderlin studied stanzas; Johannes
Kepler planetary motions; and Goethe, the bottom of a beer glass.
The finest days unfold slowly in Tübingen: lingering in Altstadt cafes, punting on the
plane-tree-lined Neckar River and pretending, as the students so diligently do, to work your
brain cells in a chestnut-shaded beer garden.
Sights & Activities
CASTLE
Schloss Hohentübingen
(Burgsteige 11; museum adult/concession €5/3; castle 7am-8pm daily, museum
10am-5pm Wed-Sun, to 7pm Thu)
On its perch above Tübingen, this turreted 16th-century
castle has a terrace overlooking the Neckar and the Altstadt's triangular rooftops to the
vine-streaked hills beyond. An ornate Renaissance gate leads to the courtyard and the
laboratory where Friedrich Miescher discovered DNA in 1869.
Inside, the
archaeology museum
hides the 35,000-year-old Vogelherd figurines, the
world's oldest figurative artworks. These thumb-sized ivory carvings of mammoths and
lions were unearthed in the Vogelherdhöhle caves in the Swabian Alps.
Am Markt
Half-timbered town houses frame the Altstadt's main plaza Am Markt, a much-loved
student hang-out. Rising above it is the 15th-century
Rathaus
, with a riotous baroque
facade and an astronomical clock. Statues of four women representing the seasons grace
the
Neptune Fountain
opposite. Keep an eye out for
No 15
, where a white window frame
identifies a secret room where Jews hid in WWII.
SQUARE
