Regensburg - 9th July

Walhalla

Today we arrived in the medieval town of Regensburg but on the way in we passed this replica of the Parthenon built by Crown Prince Ludwig in 1842. It's called Walhalla in memory of the Norse God's mythical home Valhalla. It also contains hundreds of marble busts of famous people such as Nicolas Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Catherine the Great, Beethoven and Handel to name a few. It is certainly a spectacular waste of money.

Stone Bridge

Regensburg sits on the main trade route in central Europe, mainly because of the Stone Bridge built in the 12th century which allows crossing the Danube by large caravans and armies. For centuries it was the only bridge between Ulm and Vienna, and Louis VII of France and his army used it to cross the Danube on the way to the Second Crusade. It's currently being refurbished as you can see in the picture.

Standard measures

Regensburg had its own standards of measurement which are affixed to a door pillar of the Town Hall. The foot shaped measure is actually the standard "foot" measurement, the middle length is the "cubit" and the longest measure is the "fathom". Regensburg traded with Venice which wasn't part of the Holy Roman Empire and these standards would have prevented a lot of arguments.

Roman ruins

Regensburg's history reaches back to the Roman times and some of the architecture has been preserved in one of the city centre buildings (I forget which one now). The large stones were popular with middle age builders and were pillaged from the old Roman ruins. You can still see the holes that were bored in the larger blocks that allowed them to be lifted into position.

St Stephen's Cathedral

The final part of our walking tour brought us to St Stephen's Cathedral, almost totally swallowed up by the surrounding buildings. We went inside, mainly to sit down and rest as it had been a warm day and Ros's knee was playing up. Inside it looked ... just like another cathedral with the mandatory stained glass windows, which were so busy that they let in very little actual light. We then walked back to the ship for lunch and sailed onto Nuremburg.