WIESBADEN, Germany — After all those years, it’s still a great feeling to come back to Heidelberg with a fancy camera, walk past the university buildings and just be a tourist.
A recommended walk could start at Bismarck Square, the hub for all connections into the city. On the weekends, free street parking may be available along Bergheimer Strasse. The Hauptstrasse, the backbone of the city and also its pedestrian zone, starts right there at Bismarck Square and stretches a mile or two parallel to the Neckar River.
Here is where most of Heidelberg’s laid-back life happens. The street is lined with little boutiques, numerous cafes, a few museums and several institutes reminding visitors they are walking through one of Germany’s most popular university towns, and certainly its oldest.
Heidelberg University was established in 1386 and has attracted students from all over the world ever since. Starting out as a theological center, shaken in several wars, it developed further and enjoyed its heyday in the 19th century claiming international fame for its law, medical and natural science faculties. Today, more than a quarter of the city’s 146,000 residents are students. University Square is located halfway down Hauptstrasse and offers a view of both the old and the new university buildings. The latter was built after the war from American donations.
A Heidelberg curiosity that should not be missed is hidden in a little side street between University Square and Hauptstrasse – the Studentenkarzer. The cave-shaped detention cells were designed to help the members of the numerous traditional fraternities regain sobriety, but apparently inspired many of its overnight residents to create paintings and poems on its walls, making it one of the city’s popular tourist attractions for posterity.
As one continues down Hauptstrasse, soon the majestic Heiliggeist Church towers up and seems to fill the whole square. To the right is the ornamented Ritter, Heidelberg’s oldest hotel. A quick left turn down toward the river will take the visitor by the Knösel Cafe, whose founder invented the “Student’s Kiss” in 1863, a special chocolate creation to go along with the hospitality the cafe offered for young students getting away for a rendezvous.
Two squares down to the right, a cog train takes tired walkers up to the top of the castle hill. Those with the right shoes can keep walking just a little farther to make a right turn across from the green façade of the “Völkerkunde” Museum of ethnicities up a steep little path that leads directly up to the castle gardens. The view over the entire city nestled in the Neckar River Valley is spectacular.
The castle, which has been a poetic ruin since the Wars of the Palatine Succession in the late 1600s, offers several museums including a pharmacy museum and the “Heidelberg Barrel” of 1592 holding 33,500 gallons of wine. At the exit of the castle park by the souvenir shops to the right, some 300 steps lead back downtown.
The traveler with good walking shoes is recommended to cross the Heiliggeist Square by the church and walk past the Knösel Cafe through a very touristy restaurant district down to the Alte Brücke (old bridge) leading across the Neckar River. The bridge itself, as well as a walk along the other side of the river right by the water, offers another series of great castle views. That little walkway will take visitors past some rowing and sailing clubs and across the Theodor Heuss Bridge back to Bismarckplatz.
Enjoy the sights in this scenic university town, and you, too, might lose your heart in Heidelberg.
More information on Heidelberg is available at www.heidelberg.de.