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Roots Earth in Rothenburg: audio stories about 40 places

Roots Earth has audio stories about 40 places in Rothenburg, Germany, in Europe. The Rothenburg stories are in all seven Roots Earth languages: English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian. The app needs no account: open Rothenburg, pick a place on the city's map of places and play. Download a city's audio, then it plays without a connection. The stories are written by local people.

The 40 places are listed below in the order the app shows them, and again further down with their coordinates. The lists were taken from the Roots Earth catalogue on 15 September 2026.

Published 16 September 2026. Markdown: rothenburg.md

The 40 places in Rothenburg with audio stories

In the order the app shows them.

  1. Plönlein
  2. Market Square
  3. Rothenburg Town Hall
  4. St. James's Church
  5. Councillors' Tavern and Meistertrunk Clock
  6. Town Walls and Tower Trail
  7. Castle Gate
  8. Castle Garden
  9. Medieval Crime Museum
  10. German Christmas Museum
  11. Käthe Wohlfahrt Christmas Village
  12. Klingen Gate
  13. St. Wolfgang's Church
  14. Röder Gate
  15. St. Mark's Tower and Röder Arch
  16. White Tower
  17. Old Forge
  18. Hospital Bastion and Gate
  19. Lords' Lane
  20. Franciscan Church
  21. Imperial City Museum
  22. Old Rothenburg Craftsmen's House
  23. St. George's Fountain
  24. Double Bridge
  25. Toppler Castle
  26. St. Peter and St. Paul's Church, Detwang
  27. Romantic Road Stop Rothenburg
  28. Schrannenplatz Weekly Market
  29. Tauber Riviera Beer Garden
  30. Schneeballen Bakery Tradition
  31. Hell Tavern
  32. Glocke Winery
  33. Eiswiese and Taubertal Festival Grounds
  34. Wildbad and Riverside Park
  35. Rothenburg Town Cemetery
  36. Station Quarter
  37. Gallows Gate and Würzburg Suburb
  38. Hospital Quarter and Hegereiter House
  39. Convent Garden
  40. Topplerweg and Tauber Valley Trail

Is there an audio guide for Plönlein?

Yes. Plönlein has its audio stories in the Roots Earth app: a short introduction and a deeper story, in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian.

It is place 1 of the 40 Rothenburg places in the app, at 49.3749, 10.1788. Every one of the other 39 places in the list above has the same two stories.

Roots Earth is not a guided tour: you choose the place on the city's map of places and play its story yourself.

How to use Roots Earth in Rothenburg

Open Roots Earth and choose Rothenburg. The city has its own map of places with all 40 of them on it. Tap the place you are standing in front of, or any other, and play its short introduction or its deeper story. You decide what to listen to and in which order.

You can listen in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian, and there is no account. Download a city's audio, then it plays without a connection.

In full

All 40 places in Rothenburg, in the app's order, with their coordinates.

All 40 places in Rothenburg, with coordinates

Every place below has a short introduction and a deeper story in the Roots Earth app, in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian. The names, the coordinates (latitude, longitude) and the one line descriptions are the app's own catalogue values of 15 September 2026; a place without a line here has none that this page can print.

1. Plönlein

Coordinates
49.3749, 10.1788
In one line
A small forking square where a yellow half-timbered house sits between two medieval gate towers, the Siebersturm above and the Kobolzeller Tor below. Often called one of the most photographed corners in Germany.

2. Market Square

Coordinates
49.3774, 10.1789
In one line
The civic heart of Rothenburg since the 13th century, ringed by gabled merchant houses, the Town Hall and the Councillors' Tavern. Site of the weekly market, the Christmas market and the town's famous Meistertrunk re-enactments.

3. Rothenburg Town Hall

Coordinates
49.3773, 10.1784
In one line
Rothenburg's seat of government, combining a Gothic rear hall begun around 1250 with a Renaissance front started in 1572.

4. St. James's Church

Coordinates
49.37778, 10.1775
In one line
Rothenburg's main Gothic church, built between 1311 and 1484 and Lutheran since the 16th century. A stop on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, it holds Tilman Riemenschneider's celebrated Holy Blood Altarpiece.

5. Councillors' Tavern and Meistertrunk Clock

Coordinates
49.3777, 10.1789
In one line
The former drinking house of Rothenburg's town council, on the north side of the Market Square. Its facade carries three timepieces and a pair of mechanical figures that re-enact the legendary Meistertrunk on the hour.

6. Town Walls and Tower Trail

Coordinates
49.3784, 10.1828
In one line
Rothenburg's almost complete ring of medieval fortifications, begun in the early 13th century and walkable along a covered sentry path. Damaged in 1945 and rebuilt with the help of donors named on plaques along the wall.

7. Castle Gate

Coordinates
49.3776, 10.1743
In one line
The tallest of Rothenburg's gates, guarding the western route toward the former imperial castle. A medieval gate complex with moat, drawbridge and defensive openings, leading out to the Castle Garden and a sweeping view back over the town.

8. Castle Garden

Coordinates
49.3775, 10.1726
In one line
A romantic garden laid out on the plateau where Rothenburg's imperial castle once stood before an earthquake destroyed it in 1356.

9. Medieval Crime Museum

Coordinates
49.3759, 10.178
In one line
A museum of legal history covering roughly a thousand years of European justice, housed in a former Johanniter commandery. Its collection of punishment instruments, shame masks, and witch-trial records explains how medieval law judged, shamed, and corrected, rather than staging a torture spectacle.

10. German Christmas Museum

Coordinates
49.3776, 10.1776
In one line
A museum tracing the history of German Christmas traditions through thousands of ornaments and decorations dating from roughly 1870 to 1950. It charts how festive objects evolved from paper, wax, and cotton to the blown-glass baubles still made today.

11. Käthe Wohlfahrt Christmas Village

Coordinates
49.37778, 10.1775
In one line
The flagship year-round Christmas store of Käthe Wohlfahrt, a firm founded in 1964 and based in Rothenburg since 1977. Inside, indoor village facades, a towering illuminated tree, and rotating pyramids keep the festive season alive every day of the year.

12. Klingen Gate

Coordinates
49.3811, 10.1779
In one line
Rothenburg's northern gate tower, built around 1395 to 1400, with a tall pointed helmet roof. Beyond guarding the wall, its upper chamber held a copper reservoir that supplied the town's fountains, making it both a fortress and a water tower.

13. St. Wolfgang's Church

Coordinates
49.3813, 10.1778
In one line
A late Gothic fortified church built into the town wall beside the Klingentor between 1475 and 1493 by the shepherds' guild. Known as the Schäferkirche, or shepherds' church, it hides casemates and defensive corridors beneath its floor and forms part of the northern bastion.

14. Röder Gate

Coordinates
49.3776, 10.1843
In one line
Rothenburg's eastern gate, a 14th-century tower later reinforced with a 16th-century bastion. The Röderturm, nearly 61 meters tall, is one of the few wall towers open to visitors and holds an exhibition on the 1945 bombing that damaged this part of town.

15. St. Mark's Tower and Röder Arch

Coordinates
49.3779, 10.1806
In one line
A 12th-century tower from Rothenburg's earliest defensive ring, paired with the Röderbogen archway. Together they mark the line of the town's first, smaller wall before the medieval city outgrew it and expanded outward.

16. White Tower

Coordinates
49.3789, 10.1801
In one line
A 13th-century gate tower from Rothenburg's inner fortification line, standing on the old market axis. The streets that converge beneath it still mark where the town's earlier wall once ran, before the city expanded outward.

17. Old Forge

Coordinates
49.377, 10.1838
In one line
A picturesque former blacksmith's forge with an ornate, asymmetric gable, destroyed by bombing in 1945 and faithfully rebuilt in 1951. It carries the crowned-snake coat of arms of smith Georg Gerlach and stands as a model of postwar reconstruction.

18. Hospital Bastion and Gate

Coordinates
49.3713, 10.1797
In one line
Rothenburg's mightiest gate, a star-shaped artillery bastion completed in 1546 as the last major addition to the town's defences. Designed by Leonhard Weidmann, its layered gates and turns carry the welcoming motto Pax intrantibus, salus exeuntibus.

19. Lords' Lane

Coordinates
49.3774, 10.1764
In one line
Rothenburg's grandest street, a broad patrician boulevard running from the Market Square toward the castle gate. Lined with the wide mansions of the town's wealthiest families since the 12th century, it includes the Staudtshof, the oldest unaltered patrician house.

20. Franciscan Church

Coordinates
49.37667, 10.17639
In one line
One of Rothenburg's oldest churches, founded in 1281 for the Franciscan friars and consecrated in 1309. Its plain early-Gothic nave, rare surviving rood screen, and Riemenschneider altar reflect the austere ideals of a mendicant order.

21. Imperial City Museum

Coordinates
49.3786, 10.1768
In one line
Rothenburg's city museum, housed since 1936 in a former Dominican convent that stood from 1258 to 1554. It preserves Germany's oldest convent kitchen, the Rothenburger Passion paintings of 1494, and eight centuries of the town's history.

22. Old Rothenburg Craftsmen's House

Coordinates
49.3781, 10.1813
In one line
A house from 1270 that sheltered craftsmen for more than seven centuries, now a small museum. Eleven rooms preserve the workshops, kitchen and living quarters of artisan families across Rothenburg's long history.

23. St. George's Fountain

Coordinates
49.3772, 10.1786
In one line
Rothenburg's largest fountain, a deep cistern dug in 1446 and crowned with a Renaissance column added in 1608. Topped by Saint George and the dragon, it once held the town's drinking water and guarded against fire.

24. Double Bridge

Coordinates
49.3726, 10.1707
In one line
A two-tier stone bridge over the Tauber built around 1330, its arches stacked in two rows. Once part of the Augsburg-to-Würzburg trade route, it was blown up in 1945 and faithfully rebuilt by 1956 beneath the town walls.

25. Toppler Castle

Coordinates
49.3805, 10.169
In one line
A tall, narrow water-tower house built in 1388 by Heinrich Toppler, Rothenburg's mighty medieval mayor. Once moated and reached by drawbridge, it served as his valley retreat. Toppler died in the town dungeon in 1408.

26. St. Peter and St. Paul's Church, Detwang

Coordinates
49.38703, 10.16655
In one line
A Romanesque village church in the Tauber valley, in a settlement recorded in 976, older than Rothenburg itself. It holds a Holy Cross altarpiece carved by Tilman Riemenschneider and his workshop between 1505 and 1508.

27. Romantic Road Stop Rothenburg

Coordinates
49.3794, 10.1793
In one line
A scenic touring route of around 413 kilometres linking Würzburg to Füssen, devised in the 1950s to revive postwar tourism. Rothenburg ob der Tauber is its most celebrated stop, drawing millions of visitors along the way each year.

28. Schrannenplatz Weekly Market

Coordinates
49.3796, 10.1798
In one line
An open square in the northern old town whose name recalls the medieval grain market. It hosts stalls and overflow market trade, part of a Saturday market tradition in Rothenburg that reaches back more than seven hundred years.

29. Tauber Riviera Beer Garden

Coordinates
49.3824, 10.17
In one line
A riverside beer garden in the Tauber valley below Rothenburg's walls, where locals gather under the trees with cold Franconian beer.

30. Schneeballen Bakery Tradition

Coordinates
49.377, 10.179
In one line
A Franconian pastry of fried dough strips dusted with sugar, the Schneeball is Rothenburg's signature sweet. Made here for more than 400 years and sold in nearly every bakery window, it began as a wedding treat and became the town's edible souvenir.

31. Hell Tavern

Coordinates
49.377, 10.178
In one line
A tavern on Burggasse housed in one of Rothenburg's oldest buildings, dating from around 900. Its name means "to Hell." Inside the low, ancient rooms, locals and visitors share Franconian wine and food in what is among the most atmospheric inns in town.

32. Glocke Winery

Coordinates
49.3751, 10.1789
In one line
A family winery and wine tavern in Rothenburg, keeping alive the Tauber valley's long winemaking tradition. It pours regional wines, including the dry Silvaner the area is known for, in a town better known for beer and Christmas than for its vines.

33. Eiswiese and Taubertal Festival Grounds

Coordinates
49.376, 10.168
In one line
A riverside meadow in the Tauber valley below Rothenburg that hosts the Taubertal Festival each August. For one weekend, this quiet green floodplain beneath the medieval walls fills with tens of thousands of rock and pop fans, tents, and stages.

34. Wildbad and Riverside Park

Coordinates
49.373, 10.172
In one line
A grand spa complex in the Tauber valley below Rothenburg, built by Friedrich Hessing between 1898 and 1903. Once a fashionable health resort, it has served since 1982 as an Evangelical conference centre, surrounded by terraced gardens and riverside parkland.

35. Rothenburg Town Cemetery

Coordinates
49.3839, 10.1785
In one line
Rothenburg's town cemetery lies outside the medieval walls, the resting place of generations of townspeople. Quiet and tended, it holds the memory of a community shaped by imperial-city wealth, the Thirty Years War, and the bombing of March 1945.

36. Station Quarter

Coordinates
49.3788, 10.1912
In one line
The neighbourhood east of the walls around Rothenburg's railway station, reached by the line that finally arrived in 1881. Plainer and more workaday than the old town, it is where most visitors first set foot and where everyday local life carries on.

37. Gallows Gate and Würzburg Suburb

Coordinates
49.3805, 10.1817
In one line
A medieval town gate built around 1388, named for the gallows that once stood nearby, and also known as the Würzburger Tor. Beyond it lies the Würzburg suburb, the workaday district that grew along the road toward Würzburg.

38. Hospital Quarter and Hegereiter House

Coordinates
49.3724, 10.1792
In one line
Rothenburg's southern hospital quarter, grown around the medieval Hospital of the Holy Ghost and its great defensive bastion. At its heart stands the Hegereiterhaus of 1591, a charming round-towered warden's house with a pointed tent roof.

39. Convent Garden

Coordinates
49.3788, 10.1764
In one line
The peaceful herb garden of the former Dominican convent, founded in 1258 and now part of the RothenburgMuseum. Medicinal and culinary herbs are still cultivated here, echoing the healing knowledge once practised by the nuns who tended these beds.

40. Topplerweg and Tauber Valley Trail

Coordinates
49.375, 10.17
In one line
A walking path descending from Rothenburg's walls into the green Tauber valley, past the moated Topplerschlösschen and the medieval double bridge. It links the town to a river that runs 132 kilometres from its source to the Main at Wertheim.

Roots Earth in short

Roots Earth has audio stories about 5,665 places in 130 cities, 25 countries and 6 regions, written by local people.

  • No account
  • Download a city's audio, then it plays without a connection
  • Audio stories in English and German in every city, and in Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian in 126 of the 130 cities

Roots Earth for Android is available on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rootsearth.app.