4 Best Sights in Nordlingen, The Romantic Road

At the point where the little Wörnitz River breaks through the Franconian Jura Mountains, 20 km (12 miles) southeast of Nördlingen, you'll find one of southern Germany's best-preserved medieval castles. Schloss Harburg was already old when it passed into the possession of the count of Oettingen-Wallerstein in 1295; before that time it belonged to the Hohenstaufen emperors. The same family still owns the castle, now offering 45-minute guided tours in English and German daily during the season. The castle is on B25, which runs under it through a tunnel in the rock.

This open-air museum features more than 100 vintage railroad engines and coaches, including steam engines from 1917 to the diesels and electrics of the mid-1900s, behind the old Nordlingen train station. This is a branch of the main Bavarian Railway Museum in Munich.

Nördlingen lies in the center of a huge, basinlike depression, the Ries, that until the beginning of this century was believed to be the remains of an extinct volcano. In 1960 it was proven by two Americans that the 24-km-wide (15-mile-wide) crater was caused by an asteroid at least 1 km (½ mile) in diameter. The compressed rock, or Suevit, formed by the explosive impact of the meteorite was used to construct many of the town's buildings, including St. Georg's tower. If you want, you can bike around the crater.

Watchmen still sound out the traditional So G'sell so (All's well) message from the 300-foot tower of the central parish church of St. Georg at half-hour intervals between 10 pm and midnight. The tradition goes back to an incident during the Thirty Years' War, when an enemy attempted to slip into the town and was detected by a resident. You can climb the 365 steps up the tower—known locally as the Daniel—for an unsurpassed view of the town and countryside, including, on clear days, 99 villages, and the internal workings of the massive bell system.