WURZBURG - Historic Wine Country

By Ray Chatelin

Photos By Toshi

WURZBURG, GERMANY - About an hour’s drive east of Frankfurt, are three of the most historical and attractive cities in central Europe - Wurzburg, Bamberg, Nurenberg.

They form a rough triangle within northern Bavaria, in the heart of Germany - and between them is a land of rolling hills, vineyards, ancient castles, and picturesque villages in a region called Franconia. None are promoted heavily as major destinations, yet these ancient cities are among the brightest jewels in the European experience.

Bamberg is a University City and is known as the Rome of Franconia because of its seven hills. Its fine medieval buildings and ancient street plan remain intact, carefully preserved by city politicians and planners. It has the largest preserved old town in Germany and was declared a national monument in 1981.

East, lies Bayreuth, home of the yearly Wagnerian festival. And Wagnerians, of course, know Nurenberg from Tannhauser and the Guild of The Meistersinger. Albert Durer, one of Germany's greatest portrait painters lived there and his house still stands, near the Tiergartner Gate.

It's a city that has been painstakingly rebuilt with much of its architectural treasure restored after the devastation of the Second World War. The city is now a vivid contrast between the ancient and the new with modern buildings comfortably standing next to the narrow-fronted houses of the Handwerkerhof in the old quarter.

But, it's in Wurzburg, 100 kilometers from Frankfurt, that one finds the architectural and historical heart of the region.

It held enormous power 200 years ago when the region was ruled by Bishop Princes who were elected through the See of Wurzburg, after the area was Christianized in the late Seventh Century by the Irish bishop, Kilian. They governed the region to 1802 when Prince Bishop Fechenbach abdicated and Wurzburg became Bavarian and the city's most treasured items were plundered.

Today, a much less powerful city lies on both sides of the river Main, yet it still draws on its past and derives a number of advantages from it - the valley, the flowing water, the castle atop the hillside, and the framework of nearby vineyards just outside the downtown area.

It also rests at the head of the Romantic Road, the old highway south that winds past the ancient walled city of Rothenburg, past Augsburg and to the Bavarian Alps ending at Fussen, near where King Ludwig II built his fairy-tale castle, Neuschwanstein.

The Celts were the first to fortify the city in 1000 BC. In the Sixth and Seventh Centuries the Franks settled in the region and the dukes, who were then appointed by the Franconian kings had their official residences in the present area of the cathedral.

Two places in the city of 128,000 citizens reflect its heart and the soul, the Residence and the Hof zum Stachel. The Residence - the former home of the prince-bishops of Wurzburg - is a tribute to German Baroque architecture and has been declared an international monument by the United Nations. The Hof zum Stachel, on the other hand, is a wine stube not far from the city's market square.

While the Residence is a famous site visited by historians and tourists alike, the Hof zun Stachel is a courtyard wine garden. The late Romanesque double gate opens into what was once a place of assembly during the short-lived Peasant's War in 1525 and where the rebels met to plot against the ruling class. The uprising was subsequently crushed, but the wine still flows.

A place of tradition and art, Wurzburg also owes its character to the surrounding hills dotted with vineyards. For this is a city that revels in its wine - Franconian wine that is easily recognized by its "Bocksbeutel" bottle, shaped like a fat pear with a short neck.

From downtown, on the right bank of the Main, you can look in almost any direction and see the vineyards flowing up and over the surrounding hillsides. The three largest estates - Staatlicher Hofkeller (state court cellar), the Buergerspital zum Heiligen Geist (the citizen's hospital of the Holy Spirit founded in 1319), and the Juliusspital (founded in 1516). All have cellars and historic vaults that can be toured.

And the city is just the right size for walking. The Marienberg Fortress above the town, the town hall, university, art gallery with its wonderful collection of local artists of the past 150 years; and the market square with its web-like alleyways leading off like little fingers from the center, are all within easy distances.

In addition to its landscape, past and present Wurzburg owes its fame to two artists - Tilman Riemenschneider, the inspired sculptor of the Gothic era; and Balthasar Neumann, the great architect of the Baroque.

The intensity of Riemenschneider's sculptures of saints with their melancholy expressions, and Neumann's opulent facades and splendid interiors of churches and palaces still define the city's face.

Nothing so represents the opulence of Baroque styles as the Residence. Property of the State of Bavaria, it is simply the most beautiful of European baroque castles in Southern Germany.

It was begun in 1719 under Prince Bishop Johann Philipp von Schonborn and completed in 1744 under Friedrich Karl von Schonborn to designs by Neuman - an architect in great demand during the mid-18th Century - and Venetian Architect, Giovanni Battista Piepolo who came to Wurzburg to embellish Neumann's work.

The Schonborns were relatively minor rulers in Bavarian, but they managed to build a palace that was the envy of the royal houses of Europe. The outside facade of yellowish sandstone and a number of facade rooms at the garden front only give hint of what's behind the walls.

Surrounded by lush gardens, the palace seems interchangeable with any number of palaces from the period - until you enter and walk up the Great Staircase with Tiepolo's Frescoes adorning the ceiling. Tiepolo's work is the largest single painting in the world, created in 1752-53 and stretching over an area 18 meters by 32 meters and five meters high.

You walk through the Imperial Hall, through a breathtaking succession of grand apartments, and through a gallery of the State Collection of Paintings of Bavaria with Venetian masters.

Other rooms have also been set up as a museum; and the Prince's Chamber with its anterooms was furnished for receptions, concerts, and talks in 1978. And it is the perfect setting - along with the Imperial Hall and Court Gardens - for the annual Mozart Festival.

The Court Chapel, in the southwest corner of the huge palace, has an interior of Viennese Baroque with liberal splashes of red, purple, grey marble with black and gold. The affect is stunning in its complexity.

From the Residence Square in front of the palace, you can take a path through the side streets of Wurzburg that leads past many of the city's most famous buildings and facades and ending at the fortress of Marienberg.

St. Kilian cathedral near the Main bridge, is one of the primary architectural works of the Salic Empire and one of the largest Romanesque churches in Germany, begun in 1040. At the beginning of the 18th Century, the Italian artist decorated the interior in High Baroque style. The church owes its fame to the tombstones ofthe Prince Bishops, second in numbers only to those in the Mainz cathedral.

And you walk past Neumunster church with its gravesite of the medieval poet, Walther von der Vogelweide; market square with its mix of canopied stalls within the splendid assemble of the chapel of St. Mary and the "House Of The Falcon", a combination of Rococo and gothic style; and City Hall, parts of which date from Mediaeval times and which was first documented in 1180.

And dominating it all - the many churches, museums, old buildings and small, winding streets - is the fortress of Marienberg to which you can either walk or drive. The history of this hilltop stronghold can be traced back 3000 years and in the inner courtyard you find one of Germany's oldest church buildings, one dedicated to Mary.

But it wasn't for religious matters that the fortification was constructed. After the 30 Years War, Johann Philip von Schonborn gave the castle its mighty projecting Baroque bulwarks that overlooks both the town and the surrounding countryside.

The surrounding walls saw tribal wars, the bitter battles of the migration period, mediaeval feuds, the unsuccessful onslaught of the peasants in 1525, the conquest of King Gustav Adolf of Sweden in 1631, the French occupation during the Napoleonic period, and the bombardment by Prussian artillery in 1866, the year before its function as a fortress ceased.

Everywhere you walk in Wurzburg, the past haunts you with its ongoing presence. But, unlike Vienna or Paris, it does not impose its will upon its current residents. It's very much a city of today, a place where conventions are big business.

At the point where Theaterstasse meets Semmelstrasse stands the Burgerspital zum Heiligen Geist founded in 1319 by the patrician von Steren family of Wurzburg. Today it still houses a number of foundations and is known throughout the region for its large vineyards. But, below the foundation buildings are a winestube and a restaurant, holding 100 and 410 customers respectively.

It's the winestubes that are the most easy places to explore in this city and that bring yesterday into contemporary context - old wine restaurants like the Hof zum Stachel that dates from 1413; or the Maulaffenback Stube on Moulhardgasse that allows you to bring your own food. Frankenwine was the wine of German Kings and emperors of the Middle Ages; of the Imperial Diets in Wurzburg and Rothenberg; the favorite of Goethe and Bach.

Today, students and working people sit at the same places others did centuries ago, talking about the same things that affect their lives, and they salute the same wines with the same salutations.