3 Best Sights in Regensburg, Franconia and the German Danube

Opened in 2019 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Free State of Bavaria (which was in 2018, but who's counting?), this vast riverside museum walks visitors through the checkered history of the region, from the medieval Kingdom of Bohemia right up to the present day (and future). The tone is a little up-and-down—in the midst of a section on brutal Nazi rule, there's an exhibit about Karl Valentin's comedy film Flug Zum Mond (Flight to the Moon)—but there are fascinating deep-dives into Bavarian culture and clothing, the extravagance of Ludwig II, the 1972 Summer Olympics, the booming automotive industry, and, of course, Bayern Munich soccer club. German speakers will enjoy the collected audio snippets of spoken Bavarian alongside other German dialects.

With its tiny windows, weathered tiles, and pink plaster, this bridge tower has stood at the southern end of the city's famous Stone Bridge for more than 370 years—and for the past 25 of them, it's been home to Regensburg's tiniest museum. Step inside to discover an array of items relating to the construction and development of the bridge, or to simply take in the gorgeous views over the Regensburg roof landscape. The brooding building with a massive roof to the left of the Brückturm is an old salt warehouse.

The municipal museum vividly relates the cultural history of Regensburg. It's one of the highlights of the city, both for its unusual and beautiful setting—a former Gothic monastery—and for its wide-ranging collections, from Roman artifacts to Renaissance tapestries and remains from Regensburg's 16th-century Jewish ghetto. The most significant exhibits are the paintings by Albrecht Altdorfer (1480–1538), a native of Regensburg and, along with Cranach, Grünewald, and Dürer, one of the leading painters of the German Renaissance. Altdorfer's work has the same sense of heightened reality found in that of his contemporaries, in which the lessons of Italian painting are used to produce an emotional rather than a rational effect; his drawings of Regensburg's old synagogue, exhibited here, are priceless documents.