д-р Никола Бенин

15 Best Things to Do in Würzburg (Germany)

In the midst of vineyards, Würzburg is a historic university city in Franconia. All eyes are drawn to the two palaces either side of the Main River. On the right bank behind the old town is the UNESCO-listed Würzburg Residence, the Baroque home for the Prince-Bishops of Würzburg, a palace of staggering size and splendour that has the largest fresco in the world.

On the left bank is the Marienburg Fortress, where the Prince-Bishops lived before the 18th century. In between is a city of astounding churches, chapels and museum. Most of these contain works by one of the masters of the Northern Renaissance, the sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider. He produced dozens of religious statues and effigies in the city and was even locked up in the fortress for a time during the 16th-century German Peasants’ War.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the palace for the Prince-Bishop Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn is on a scale that has to be seen to be believed.

Constructed from 1720 to 1744, the Würzburg Residence is among Europe’s great Baroque palaces and is considered architect Balthasar Neumann’s greatest achievement.

The Residence was hit during the Second World War, but its most splendid architecture survived.

The grand staircase is nothing short of dazzling for its self-supporting trough vault that climbs to 23 metres, and painted with a gigantic fresco by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

This is the largest fresco in the world and symbolises the four continents: Europe, America, Asia and Africa.

Visiting dignitaries were received in the breathtaking Imperial Hall, a dazzling mass of painting, stuccowork, statues and marble completed at head-spinning expense in 1751.

A permanent landmark on the left bank of the Main, the Marienburg Fortress crowns a spur high above the river, in a spot that has been fortified since Celtic times.

The castle’s story begins in the 1200s when defensive walls were built around Würzburg first church, which had stood here since the 8th century.

For almost five centuries up to 1719 the Marienburg Fortress was the seat of the Prince-Bishops, and it gradually changed from a defensive building into a Renaissance and then Baroque palace after it was almost razed by the Swedes in the Thirty Years’ War.

The Fürstenbaumuseum reveals Würzburg’s 1,200 years of history, and uses period furniture to help you picture the opulence of the Prince-Bishops.

Among the many enlightening things on the tour is the dungeon where Renaissance master Tilman Riemenschneider was imprisoned for allying with the peasants in the 16th century German Peasants’ War.