Germany Guide
Northern Bavaria: Franconia
Eichstätt
Few places illustrate more graphically the contrast between the capital-city airs and country-town scale of a minor German Residenzstadt than EICHSTÄTT, tucked into a loop in the Altmühl River in the region known as the Franconian Jura, south of Nuremberg. Even today, the little cathedral and university city is no bigger than a small market town, with a population of less than 14,000. Yet for five centuries, from 1305 until secularization at the beginning of the nineteenth century, its prince-bishops held spiritual and temporal power over a diminutive territory on Franconia's southern fringe. A Catholic stronghold during the Thirty Years' War, it paid for its piety when it was sacked by the Swedes on February 12, 1634. The Baroque reconstruction by the Italians Giacomo Angelini, Mauritio Pedetti and Gabriel de Gabrieli created the capital city in miniature that delights visitors today.
The focus of Eichstätt's "official" quarter is the Dom, largely fourteenth-century Gothic, though you'd scarcely know it, so completely do the later Baroque accretions wrap around it on all but the north side facing Domplatz, creating the slightly odd effect of a large ecclesiastical building with no real main facade. Inside, the most notable artwork is the richly carved eleven-metre-high limestone Pappenheim Altar, a gift in 1489 from Kaspar Marschall von Pappenheim in thanks for his safe return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. A door between the south tower and the Sakramentskapelle leads to the Mortuarium, though anything less like a mortuary than this lovely twin-aisled late Gothic hall with its graceful vaulting and stately central pillars is hard to imagine.
The Baroque Residenzplatz curves in spectacular fashion around the south and west sides of the Dom. It is a wonderfully uniform urban space, its elegant crescent of houses echoing the style of the Residenz opposite (guided tours April– Oct Mon– Thurs 11am & 3pm, Sat & Sun 10.15am, 11am, 11.45am, 2pm, 2.45pm & 3.30pm; €1), which was built in three phases from 1700 to 1777 by Jakob Engel, Gabriel de Gabrieli and Mauritio Pedetti respectively. High points of the tour are Pedetti's impressive staircase and the Spiegelsaal, or hall of mirrors, on the second floor.
Dominating the town from its site high above the Altmühl to the west is the massive Willibaldsburg, former seat of the prince-bishops. The castle was established in 1355 by Bishop Berthold von Zollern but owes its present appearance to Elias Holl – architect of Augsburg's Rathaus – who extended it for prince-bishop Konrad von Gemmingen between 1595 and 1612. The bishop established a celebrated botanical garden within the castle walls. Destroyed during the Thirty Years' War, in recent years it has been re-established as the Bastiongarten. The castle contains two museums: the Jura Museum (April– Sept Tues– Sun 9am–6pm; Oct– March Tues– Sun 10am–4pm; €4), which displays fossils from the region's unusually rich Jurassic limestone deposits, including a rare fossil of an Archaeopteryx, a type of prehistoric bird; and the Museum für Ur- und Frühgeschichte (same hours & price), which catalogues the region's history from the Stone Age to the early Middle Ages.
Places to stay include the Baroque Hotel Adler, Marktplatz 22 ( 
08421/67 67, 
www.adler-eichstaett.de ; Price: €101-120), and the simpler but attractive Ratskeller in the same complex as the Altmühltal information centre ( 08421/90 12 58, www.ratskeller-eichstaett.de ; Price: €41-60); it also serves food and has a Biergarten. The youth hostel is below the Willibaldsburg at Reichenaustrasse 15 ( 08421/98 04 10, www.jugendherberge.de ; dorms €19.50 with breakfast). The Ratskeller aside, good places to eat include the attractive Gasthaus Krone at Domplatz 3 ( 08421/44 06; closed Wed), which specializes in Altmühltal lamb, and the Braugasthof Trompete at Ostenstrasse 3 ( 08421/981 70; open daily), which serves the local Hofmühl beer along with Bavarian and Italian food. All are reasonably priced, and there is a smattering of cafés and ice-cream parlours around town.