DISCOVER BAMBERG, Bavaria

Bamberg lies in northern Bavaria, 63 km north of Nuremberg by railway, and 101 km east of Wurzburg, also by rail. It lies on the Regnitz river, 3 km below its junction with the Main river. Its geography is shaped by the Regnitz and by the foothills of the Steigerwald, part of the German uplands.

From northeast to southwest, the town is divided into first the Regnitz plain, then one large and several small islands formed by two arms of the Regnitz (Inselstadt), and finally the part of town on the hills, the "Hill Town" (Bergstadt).

Like Rome, Bamberg extends over seven hills, each crowned by a church. This has led to Bamberg being called the "Franconian Rome" - although a running joke among Bamberg's tour guides is to refer to Rome as the "Italian Bamberg".

Bamberg is home to nearly 7,000 foreign nationals, including over 4,100 members of the United States Army and their dependents.


HISTORY OF BAMBERG

During the post-Roman centuries of Germanic migration and settlement, the region afterwards included in the Diocese of Bamberg was inhabited for the most part by Slavs. The town, first mentioned in 902, grew up by the castle (Babenberch) which gave its name to the Babenberg family. On their extinction it passed to the Saxon house. The area was Christianized chiefly by the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Fulda, and the land was under the spiritual authority of the Diocese of Wurzburg.

In 1007, Henry II, King of the Romans, made Bamberg, a family inheritance, the seat of a separate diocese. The emperor's purpose in this was to make the Diocese of Wurzburg less unwieldy in size and to give Christianity a firmer footing in the districts of Franconia, east of Bamberg. In 1008, after long negotiations with the Bishops of Wurzburg and Eichstatt, who were to cede portions of their dioceses, the boundaries of the new diocese were defined, and Pope John XVIII granted the papal confirmation in the same year.

The new cathedral was consecrated May 6, 1012, and in 1017 Henry II founded on Mount St. Michael, near Bamberg, a Benedictine abbey for the training of the clergy. The emperor and his wife Cunigunde gave large temporal possessions to the new diocese, and it received many privileges out of which grew the secular power of the bishop (cf. Weber in Historisches Jahrbuch der Gorresgesellschaft for 1899, 326-345 and 617-639).

Pope Benedict VIII during his visit to Bamberg (1020) placed the diocese in direct dependence on the Holy See. For a short time Bamberg was the centre of the Holy Roman Empire. Henry and Cunigunde were both buried in the cathedral.

From the middle of the 13th century onward the bishops were princes of the Empire and ruled Bamberg, forcing the construction of monumental buildings. In 1248 and 1260 the see obtained large portions of the estates of the Counts of Meran, partly through purchase and partly through the appropriation of extinguished fiefs. The old Bishopric of Bamberg was composed of an unbroken territory extending from Schlusselfeld in a northeasterly direction to the Franconian Forest, and possessed in addition estates in the Duchies of Carinthia and Salzburg, in the Nordgau (the present Upper Palatinate), in Thuringia, and on the Danube. By the changes resulting from the Reformation the territory of this see was reduced nearly one half in extent.

The witch trials of the 17th century claimed hundreds of victims in Bamberg and reached a climax between 1626 and 1631 under the rule of Prince-Bishop Johann Georg II. Fuchs von Dornheim. The famous Drudenhaus (witch prison), built in 1627, is no longer standing today, however, detailed accounts of some cases, like that of Johannes Junius, remain.

In 1647, the University of Bamberg was founded as "Academia Bambergensis".

In 1759 the possessions and jurisdictions of the diocese situated in Austria were sold to that State. When the secularization of church lands took place (1802) the diocese covered 1276 square miles (3 305 km²) and had a population of 207,000. Bamberg thus lost its independence in 1802, and in 1803, it became a part of Bavaria.

Bamberg was first connected to the rail system in 1844, which has been an important part of its infrastructure ever since.

After World War I, when a communist uprising took control over Bavaria, the government fled to Bamberg and had to stay for almost two years, before the Bavarian capital Munich was recaptured by Freikorps (see Weimar Republic). The first republican constitution of Bavaria was passed in Bamberg, thus known as "Bamberger Verfassung" (Bamberg constitution).

In 1973, the town celebrated the 1000th anniversary of its founding.


MAIN SIGHTS OF BAMBERG

The Old Town of Bamberg is included in the UNESCO World Heritage, since it has retained its medieval look and was one of the few German cities that sustained virtually no damage during WWII. 2005 the city established a documentation centre to support World Heritage activities. Some of the main sights are:

• Cathedral (1237), with the tombs of emperor Henry II and Pope Clement II
• Alte Hofhaltung, residence of the bishops in the 16th and 17th centuries
• Neue Residenz, residence of the bishops after the 17th century
• Old Town Hall (1386), built in the middle of the Regnitz River, accessible by two bridges
• Klein-Venedig ("Little Venice"), a colony of picturesque fishermen's houses from the 19th century along one side of the river Regnitz.

Cathedral

The cathedral is a late Romanesque building with four imposing towers. It was founded in 1004 by the emperor Henry II, finished in 1012 and consecrated on May 6, 1012. It was later partially destroyed by fire in 1081. The new cathedral, built by St. Otto of Bamberg, was consecrated in 1111, and in the 13th century received its present late-Romanesque form.

The cathedral is about 94 m long, 28 m broad, 26 m high, and the four towers are each about 81 m high. Of its many works of art may be mentioned the magnificent marble tomb of the founder and his wife, the empress Cunigunde, considered the masterpiece of the sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider, and carved between 1499 and 1513. Another treasure of the cathedral is an equestrian statue known as the Bamberg Horseman (germ. Der Bamberger Reiter). This statue, possibly belonging to the emperor Conrad III, most likely dates to approximately 1200.

Neue Residenz

The Neue Residenz (New Palace) (1698-1704) was initially occupied by the prince-bishops, and from 1864 to 1867 by the deposed King Otto of Greece. The magnificent Rosengarten (Rose Garden) offers excellent views of the city.

Castle Altenburg

The castle is located at the highest of Bamberg's seven hills. It was mentioned for the first time in 902 BCE.[citation needed] Between 1251 and 1553 it was the residence of Bamberg's bishops. Destroyed in 1553 by Albert Alcibiades, Margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach, it was used, after scanty repairs, only as a prison, and increasingly decayed. In 1801 doctor A. F. Marcus bought the castle and completely repaired it. His friend, the famous German writer E.T.A. Hoffmann, who was very impressed by the building, lived there for a while. The next owner, Anton von Greifenstein, founded in 1818 an association to save the castle. This society still maintains the whole property today.

Other sights

Other noteworthy churches are the Jakobskirche, an 11th-century Romanesque basilica; the St Martinskirche; the Marienkirche or Obere Pfarrkirche (1320-1387), which has now been restored to its original pure Gothic style. The Michaelskirche, 12th-century Romanesque (restored), on the Michaelsberg, was formerly the church of a Benedictine monastery secularized in 1803, which now contains the Burgerspital, or almshouse, and the museum and municipal art collections.

Of the bridges connecting the sections of the lower town the most interesting is the Obere Brucke, completed in 1455. Halfway across this, on an artificial island, is the Rathaus or City Hall (rebuilt 1744-1756). The royal lyceum, formerly a Jesuit college, contains notable collections and the royal library of over 300,000 volumes.

The picturesque Old Palace (Alte Hofhaltung) was built in 1591 on the site of an old residence of the counts of Babenberg. Noteworthy among the monuments of the town is the Maximilian fountain (1880), with statues of Maximilian I of Bavaria, the emperor Henry II and his wife, Conrad III and St Otto, bishop of Bamberg.


BEER OF BAMBERG

Bamberg is also known for smoked beer (or Rauchbier in German). The most famous being Schlenkerla "Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier" from the Heller brewery and which can be enjoyed fresh at the Schlenkerla tavern on the Dominikaner Strasse in the old town.

Bamberg is currently (2005) home to 9 breweries (Brauerei Fassla, Brauerei Greifenklau, Brauerei Heller-Trum ("Schlenkerla"), Brauerei Kaiserdom, Keesmann Brau, Klosterbrau, Mahrs Brau, Maisel Brau and Brauerei Spezial) and one microbrewery (Ambrausianum) which is unprecedented in a city of only 70,000 people.


BAMBERG TRANSPORTATION

• Railway: Bamberg lies on the InterCityExpress Munich - Nuremberg - Leipzig - Berlin - Hamburg main line. From Munich, the train journey takes about two hours. From Berlin, it takes about four hours. Connections to the west are rather poorer: regional trains connect Bamberg to Wurzburg, which is fully connected to the ICE network. Tourists arriving at Frankfurt International Airport will have to change trains there. Bamberg is well connected to other towns in Upper Franconia, such as Bayreuth, Coburg, and Kronach with usually at least an hourly service.
  
  
• Motorways: Bamberg is not on any of the major (single-digit) Autobahns. But it is connected to the network: the east-west A70 from Schweinfurt (where it joins the A7 which extends from the Danish to the Austrian border) to Bayreuth (where it joins the Munich-Berlin A9)runs along the northern edge of the town. The A73 connects Bamberg to Nuremberg and will, once construction has been completed, extend further north into Thuringia, ending at Suhl (Completion date is 2008).
  
  
• Shipping: the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal begins near Bamberg. With its completion in 1992, uninterrupted shipping was possible between the North and Black Seas.
  
  
• Public Transport: public transport within Bamberg relies exclusively on buses. More than 20 lines connect the outlying quarters and some villages in the vicinity to the Central Bus Station. In addition, there are several "Night Lines" (the last of these, though, tend to run around midnight) and some Park and Ride lines from parking lots on the periphery to the town centre.

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