Our last drive as part of our exploration of the Romantic Road in southern Germany took us from the city of Augsburg to the mountain ski resort town of Nesselwang where we were staying for two nights. It was from this base we intended to explore some of the famous castles in this border zone with Austria. Our practice for the last 8/9 days when were travelling on to our next overnight destination was to pick a smaller town on our route and have a stroll before continuing our drive to our destination. Today’s stopover was the town of Schongau which is a classic hill town with the remnants of its medieval walls still in place defending it from passing armies marching along the old Roman Road below in the valley. On the list of Romantic Road towns, it was the third last stop before this tourist route ended at Fussen.
The original section of the town of Schongau sat at the top of the hill with the modern town scattered around it below. We found a parking area just down the hill from one of the central gates in the wall around Schongau and we made our way up hill and through the narrow gate iinto the old town. We found our way into the centre of the hill town where there was an extended central square. The houses surrounding this area were very attractive and the citizens had done a lot of work in this area to ensure the flowers were blooming.
In the image below, the oldest church in town can be seen in the centre of the photo, the white building with the ‘stepped’ façade. It is called St Maria Himmelfahrt (St Mary’s Assumption) and was first mentioned in the 13th century.
In the centre of the platz there is a large fountain with a tall column in the centre holding a statue of a saint. It may in fact be a Marien Column given the name of the nearby church but I was unable to determine the details of the figure at the top. As can be seen from the photo on the left below, the flowers continued the show around this square.
We made our way back down towards the Altstadt area of town looking for a café for our morning tea. We passed the Holy Spirit Church (Heilig Geist) as we arrived back towards the centre of town. It was built in the early 18th century as part of a Carmelite monastery and is part of the catholic parish of Schongau.
We found ourselves a very pleasant café just over the road from the town’s Rathaus. I was very impressed by the sculpture of the eagle, a key symbol of Germany, standing in the centre of the road over from the Town Hall.
When morning tea was finished, it was time make our way out of the maze of this small hill town, down to our car park and on to Nesselwang.
NESSELWANG MENU
FOGTRAVEL 