Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report Munich Daytrip - Nordlingen - A Medieval Town built inside a Meteor Crater

Nordlingen is an 1100 year old Bavarian town along the Romantic Road that was built inside a meteor crater. The meteorite impacted the area 14 million years ago, creating a 24km wide crater, called the Ries Crater. A few towns are built inside the crater, one of which is Nordlingen.

Nordlingen has an intact medieval city wall, complete with 5 city gates. You can walk on the city wall for free; it took us about 1.5 hours to circle the town on the wall. From the wall, we got a clear view of the city below. One thing that caught our eye were the half houses built into the city wall. Some houses had one half their house built on one side of the wall, the other half built on the other side of the wall, making the city wall part of their house structure and using the moat to form their gardens.

As we walked the wall, we looked out the small openings in the wall, probably used to look for approaching enemy and saw what looked like a drained moat. Since the wall was no longer needed for defensive purposes, people have used the moat as part of their backyard, adding basketball courts, trampolines and mini golf courses to it. The city has also repurposed parts of it for playgrounds and parks.

Afterwards, we walked out of Nordlingen town and headed towards the crater wall about 10 km away. (Nordlingen is near the middle of the crater). We did not make it all the way to the outer crater wall, but the walk took us past vast farmlands.

We arrived at Nordlingen by train in the morning, with the Bayern daily unlimited travel pass for 28EU return tickets for our family of 5. The ride was about 2 hours, with one connection, coming from Munich.

For more details and pictures, feel free to stop by my blog at http://budgettravelwithkids.com/blog/nordlingen/