5 Days in Heidelberg

Heidelberg Castle is what a ruin should look like: red sandstone towers and Renaissance facades with empty windows, high above the Neckar. Most visitors assume the French wrecked it. The real story has more bad luck in it.

It began in 1537, when the older upper castle on the hill above burned down. General Tilly's army took the town in 1622, in the Thirty Years' War. French troops set it on fire in 1689 and came back in 1693 to finish the job with mines. The Elector had it patched up, but in 1720 Charles Philip, a Catholic, quarreled with Heidelberg's Protestants over the Church of the Holy Spirit and moved his court to Mannheim. In June 1764 lightning struck the repaired buildings twice and burned them out, and locals carted the stone away for their own houses.

What saved the ruin was a Frenchman: Count Charles de Graimberg, an émigré, who from about 1810 documented and defended it, and whose engravings made it famous. In the 1860s a campaign to rebuild it completely set off the Schlossstreit, the castle quarrel, and by 1890 an expert commission had decided to keep it as a ruin. Only Friedrich's Wing was restored, around 1900. The Romantics and Turner loved the place exactly as it is.

Three things hide inside the castle ticket. The first is the Great Tun (Großes Fass), the fourth giant barrel in the castle's history, built in 1751 and holding some 220,000 liters. It was hardly ever full. By the story it's guarded by Perkeo, a court jester of Charles Philip who could drink prodigiously and, legend says, died after drinking water.

The second is the German Apothecary Museum, in the basement of Ottheinrich's Wing, where pulverized mummy was once prescribed for coughs and heartbreak. The third is the garden. The Hortus Palatinus was laid out from 1614 for Elector Frederick V and his wife Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I of England, and it was called the eighth wonder of the world. Frederick accepted the crown of Bohemia in 1619, lost it within a year and left for good, and the garden was never finished. The terraces remain, with a view of the town.

After lunch (the Kulturbrauerei on Leyergasse is open daily from 12:00, or buy a Butterbrezel at any Hauptstraße bakery), go on up. The Heidelberg Bergbahn climbs from the Kornmarkt past the castle and Molkenkur to the summit of the Königstuhl (568 m), about 450 m above the old town, with one change on the way. The last leg is a historic funicular more than a century old. On a clear day you see the Neckar and the Rhine plain.

Walk around the top before you head down. The Märchenparadies fairy-tale park is up here for families (open until 11 November this year), and the Himmelsleiter, "Heaven's Ladder", is a stairway of about 1,200 steps that drops 270 m back toward the castle. It's steep but easy to follow, and the best way down if your knees are good.

Walk down through the Kornmarkt to the market square, where the Church of the Holy Spirit (Heiliggeistkirche) fills one whole side. It was built between 1398 and 1515 and used to hold the Palatine Library, the Bibliotheca Palatina. When General Tilly took the town in 1622, he gave the books to the Pope as a gift. Most of the originals are still in the Vatican. From 1706 until 1936 a wall divided the church so Catholics and Protestants could pray under the same roof.

Across the street on the Hauptstraße, the Hotel zum Ritter St. Georg was built in 1592 for a Huguenot cloth merchant, Charles Bélier, and is one of the few buildings that survived the burning of the town in 1693. Look at the carved stone facade rather than the menu.

Two minutes toward the river, on Haspelgasse, is Café Knösel and the sweet Heidelberg is best known for after the castle: the Studentenkuss, the student kiss. Fridolin Knösel opened the café in 1863 and invented it that year: a nougat praline on a thin wafer in dark chocolate, wrapped in a small box. The story goes that young women of the 19th century could not be alone with students, so a gift box that could carry a handwritten note was the perfect excuse.

Buy a box for the road and eat one at the café with a coffee. It's still sold almost only in Heidelberg and by post, which makes it a better souvenir than anything with a castle printed on it.

The Old Bridge (Alte Brücke, officially the Karl-Theodor-Brücke) was finished in 1788 in red sandstone and is usually counted as the ninth bridge on this spot. The earlier ones, mostly wooden, fell to ice, floods and war. French troops blew this one up in 1689, and on 29 March 1945 retreating German engineers blew up two piers, pointlessly, since American troops entered the city unopposed the next morning.

Walk to the far bank and turn around: the castle glows above the red roofs. At the town end, the bronze Brückenaffe, the bridge monkey, holds up a mirror. A monkey figure stood on the bridge tower from the early 17th century until 1689. The usual explanation is that it mocked the neighbors across the river, who belonged to the Archbishopric of Mainz until 1460. The present bronze by Gernot Rumpf dates from 1979, and its head is hollow, so people pose with their own heads inside.

End the day in the old brewery house on Steingasse, a minute from the bridge. Vetter's brews its own beer in the cellar: a light Helles, a dark wheat beer and the famous Vetter 33. It made the Guinness book in 1994 as the strongest beer in the world by original gravity, and at about 10.5% it's one to share, not a pint. Pair it with Bratwurst, a pork schnitzel or a plate of Bavarian Brotzeit (cold cuts, bread and pretzel).

It's a beer-hall kind of place and makes no attempt at being refined. The food is solid, and the beer is why you came.

The University of Heidelberg was founded in 1386 by the Elector Rupert I, and Martin Luther came to defend his ideas here in 1518. The Baroque Old University on Universitätsplatz was built from 1712, and its ground-floor museum covers the university's story in three color-coded rooms. The Great Hall upstairs is used for lectures and concerts, so you can only see it when it's free.

The real reason people come is next door: the Studentenkarzer, the student jail. The university judged its own students, and the five cells you can visit date from 1823. Typical offenses were singing too loudly, smashing street lanterns, swimming naked in the market fountain, dueling and mocking the police. By the later 19th century a stint inside was a badge of honor, and students decorated the walls and ceilings with paintings and poems. Many are still there.

Two minutes away is the Jesuit Church (Jesuitenkirche), a Baroque hall church begun in 1712 and finished in 1759. It's white inside, with only the column capitals picked out in green and gold, a calm place to sit between museums.

Then walk up Plöck to the University Library. The street is the busiest bicycle street in the old town, so look both ways.

The Hauptstraße runs for about 1.6 km through the old town and is often called the longest pedestrian shopping street in Germany. It's mostly chain stores, but the bakeries along it sell the proper Brezel, a pretzel with a soft center and a dark crust, often split and buttered. Eat one standing up, the way locals do. The department stores on the street also have delicatessen counters (Markthallen) where you can eat on the spot.

For a sit-down lunch, step off the main street: Wikivoyage lists Franz Soupmarine and Unter Freunden, both on Märzgasse, among the budget options (check they're open). Otherwise look for Käsespätzle, the soft Swabian egg noodles baked with cheese and onions, or a schnitzel, and ask for the dish of the day rather than the tourist menu.

The Palatinate Museum (Kurpfälzisches Museum) at Hauptstraße 97 is the city's own museum, with exhibits from prehistory to modern times, and it's the best place to understand why the Electors mattered. Its best-known piece is Tilman Riemenschneider's Twelve Apostles altar of 1509, though the museum says the altar isn't fully on view while it is examined ahead of a restoration. Other highlights are the Roman Jupiter Giant Column from Neuenheim, Carl Rottmann's view of the castle and the sandstone originals of the Old Bridge's statues.

It also helps with the deep past. The museum shows a copy of the jawbone of "Heidelberg Man", found at nearby Mauer in 1907, which counts among the earliest evidence of human life in Europe.

A 15-minute walk west, near Bismarckplatz, is the strangest museum in Heidelberg. After World War I, the psychiatrist and art historian Hans Prinzhorn collected drawings, paintings, textiles, sculptures and writings made between 1880 and 1920 by people in psychiatric institutions, most of them diagnosed as schizophrenic. The Prinzhorn Collection shows them in changing exhibitions.

It's not an easy visit, but the work is serious and often startling, and it's worth the walk.

The heart of the student scene is the Untere Straße, a short, crowded lane behind the Hauptstraße lined with small bars and pubs. Since April 2026, stricter closing hours apply in the core of the old town: bars have to shut at midnight on weeknights and at 1am on nights before Saturday, Sunday and holidays, with a few exception days a year (the start of the semester and Halloween among them). So the evening starts early and ends earlier than it used to.

Two names that come up as student classics are the Zieglers, reported as the oldest students' bar in town, and the Großer Mohr, small and often full of medical students on Tuesday nights (check they're open). Order a local beer or a Weinschorle (wine mixed with sparkling water, the everyday drink of the region) and talk to whoever is next to you. If a student party is advertised only by word of mouth, get in, but try not to announce that you're a tourist.

Cross the Old Bridge and look for the sign to the Schlangenweg, the Snake Path, a zigzag of steps climbing the hillside among walls and vines. At the top is the Philosophenweg, the Philosophers' Walk, a path of about 2 km on the north slope with the best view of the castle and the old town. The best spot is the little Philosophengärtchen garden, where a bust of the poet Joseph von Eichendorff stands, and further east the Hölderlin stone recalls the poet's ode to Heidelberg.

Nobody agrees where the name came from. One version says Hölderlin, Eichendorff and other thinkers walked here in the early 19th century. Another says students, who once had to study philosophy before their real subjects, liked it for private walks. Either way, the path is made for looking back at the town, and grapes grow on the slope again.

From the end of the Philosophenweg a path leads up the Heiligenberg, the Holy Mountain (439 m), where people have lived since the Stone Age. In the Iron Age it was a big Celtic settlement protected by a double ring wall you can still follow through the forest, and in the Middle Ages monks built two monasteries here. St. Michael's and St. Stephen's are both ruins now.

The Heidenloch, the Heathens' Hole, is a shaft about 56 m deep whose purpose nobody has settled. It might be a Roman cistern or a well. It's an odd, quiet corner of the forest. For lunch, the Waldschenke forest inn on the hill is open Wednesday to Thursday and Friday to Sunday from 11:30 to 19:00, with the kitchen closing about an hour earlier, and closed on Monday and Tuesday (its own site; call 06221 438 5649 if the weather is bad). On those two days bring a picnic.

A few minutes' walk from the monastery is a stone amphitheater in the forest, and it isn't ancient. The Thingstätte was started in 1934 (the foundation stone was laid on 30 May) and opened by Joseph Goebbels on 22 June 1935 as a stage for Nazi mass events, part of a plan to make Heidelberg a propaganda festival city. The Thing movement faded within a few years, and the site lay unused after the war. It hosted unofficial Walpurgis Night parties from the 1980s until the city banned them in late 2017, and it's a protected monument now.

It's worth the short detour because it shows that picture-book Heidelberg had a Third Reich chapter too. Today it's a ring of steps in the trees, and the quiet is odd.

Walk down to the Neckar and stroll west along the river path to the Neckarwiese, the long meadow on the north bank. On warm days half the city lies on it with a grill and a beer, with the castle in the view. Grilling is only allowed in the marked zones, and disposable grills must not go straight on the grass.

Café Frisch, a bakery-café at Jahnstraße 34, is about a kilometer west of the meadow, so treat it as a detour rather than a picnic stop. In October the meadow is quieter, but still a good place to sit.

If you have energy left, the Hirschgasse is a house on the north bank, east of the Old Bridge, where fraternities held their Mensur bouts and where Mark Twain watched one in 1878 for A Tramp Abroad. Its hotel and restaurants closed in 2023, so it's a look from the outside.

Cross back to the old town for dinner at the Kulturbrauerei on Leyergasse, a brewery, inn and beer garden run by one family, a few steps from the Hauptstraße. It brews its own beers (a Pils, a Kräusen and a wheat beer among them) and cooks regional dishes: Käsespätzle, roast pork with sauerkraut, Palatinate sausages, veal schnitzel. Expect mains of roughly 22-36 EUR.

Schwetzingen Palace was the Electors' summer residence, roughly halfway between their seats at Heidelberg and Mannheim, and the garden is the reason to come. It was laid out in the 18th century under Charles Theodore, who moved the court here in the warm months.

The strangest building is the garden mosque. It was never a house of prayer, only a fashionable piece of 18th-century Turkish style in the park. Wander the long paths, the groves and the follies. The palace itself can only be seen on a guided tour, and the garden alone is enough for most visits.

Speyer is the Palatinate, and the food changes accordingly. Walk along the Maximilianstraße, the main street from the Altpörtel city gate toward the cathedral, and pick a Gasthaus serving Palatinate dishes: Saumagen, a sow's stomach stuffed with pork and potato and fried until crisp, with sauerkraut and a quarter-liter of Palatinate Riesling or a Schorle.

Saumagen sounds worse than it is. It tastes like a dense, very good sausage.

Speyer Cathedral, the Imperial Cathedral, was begun in 1030 by Emperor Conrad II as the largest church in the Christian West. It was consecrated in 1061 and rebuilt in the 1090s under Henry IV, and the red sandstone basilica is the largest surviving Romanesque church in the world. UNESCO listed it in 1981.

Conrad is buried in the crypt, along with other German emperors and kings, so this is the burial church of the Salian dynasty. Inside it's huge and calm: no gilding, just stone and arches. Go down into the crypt, then take a minute at the back to see how little has changed in 900 years.

Speyer's medieval Jewish quarter is part of a UNESCO World Heritage listing since 2021, together with Worms and Mainz, as the SchUM cities. At the Judenhof in Kleine Pfaffengasse, the ritual bath (mikveh) is among the oldest preserved in central Europe. It's open daily from 10am to 5pm until the end of October (Tuesday to Sunday, 10am-4pm in winter), for about 5 EUR, and guided tours can be booked through Speyer's tourist information.

Finish at the Altpörtel, the old city gate at the western end of Maximilianstraße, and take a late train back to Heidelberg. If machines beat medieval baths for you, swap this stop for the Technik Museum Speyer, with a Boeing 747 and a Soviet space shuttle you can walk through (it's in the More Time list below, and it fills most of a day).

Weinheim, about 15 km north of Heidelberg, is known as the Two-Castle Town. The Windeck ruin above it was built by Lorsch Abbey in the Middle Ages, and the Wachenburg across the valley is a newer castle-style building put up by student fraternities between 1907 and 1928. The old town has an Old Town Hall from 1557, remains of the medieval wall and a witch's tower, the Hexenturm.

The Schlosspark, around the former Palatine palace (now the town hall), has a huge Lebanon cedar. Next to it is the Exotenwald, about 60 hectares with some 170 tree species, a quiet autumn walk.

For lunch, the Woinemer Hausbrauerei at Friedrichstraße 23 brews its own beer and serves regional food. It's open daily from 12:00 and the kitchen runs to about 9pm (9:30pm on Friday and Saturday, 8:30pm on Sunday).

Ride tram 5 back toward Heidelberg to Schriesheim, a wine town at the foot of the hills. A path winds up through the Ölberg vineyards to the ruin of the Strahlenburg, the castle that dominates the town. The ruin is owned by a civic foundation, and there's a restaurant and terrace at the top, but its hours have changed with new operators, so check before you count on a meal. The round keep can't be climbed.

The wine here is mostly Burgunder (Pinot) varieties, and the Badische Bergstraße is the smallest wine district in Baden. In autumn the vineyards turn yellow and red and the harvest is under way.

In spring and autumn, many Baden winegrowers hang a bundle of branches over the door to say their yard is open, which is the sign of a Straußwirtschaft. In October the order is Federweißer ('feather white'), the cloudy, still-fermenting new wine, and its partner Zwiebelkuchen, a savory onion tart. Federweißer tastes like sweet grape juice, but it's still fermenting and hits harder than it tastes. Pace yourself.

No tavern has a fixed address and season to point to, because opening dates change week by week. Ask at the cooperative or the tourist office in Schriesheim which ones are open that day, and don't count on a tavern before mid-afternoon.

Come back to the old town for the last night at the Red Ox (Zum Roten Ochsen), built in 1703 and in the same family, the Spengels, since 1839. It's one of the oldest and most traditional student inns in Heidelberg, with walls and tables covered in student memorabilia, and the menu is honest German home cooking: boiled ox breast, Mostbraten, Käsespätzle, schnitzel and Palatinate sauerkraut dishes.

Eat well and drink a Schoppen (a glass of wine) or a local beer. You will not be the only tourist, but you will be among students and locals. Zum Seppl next door, a student tavern since the 17th century, is currently open only for booked events, so you can only look at it from the street.