Augsburg
— — a Renaissance city older than the empire it survived.
Not only on a wall.
“Augsburg sits between the Lech and the Wertach, the oldest city in Bavaria and one of the oldest in Germany. The Romans laid it down in 15 BC. The Fuggers later made it a banking capital of the Renaissance. Walk into the Fuggerei and the rent is still under a euro a year, the way Jakob Fugger arranged it in 1521. There is a quiet here that older cities keep — courtyards behind the courtyards, a fountain that has been running since the sixteenth century. from the studio
Augsburg, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Augsburg is the third-largest city in Bavaria after Munich and Nuremberg, with a population of roughly 300,000. It was founded in 15 BC as Augusta Vindelicorum, named for the emperor Augustus, which makes it among the oldest continuously inhabited towns in Germany. The old city sits on a low terrace between the Lech and the Wertach rivers, in the Swabian foothills southwest of Munich. The Romanesque-Gothic cathedral, the Perlachturm, and the Renaissance Rathaus by Elias Holl all stand within a short walk of each other in the historic centre.
The Fuggerei, completed in 1521 by the banker Jakob Fugger, is the oldest social housing complex still in use in the world. Sixty-seven houses, one hundred and forty-two apartments, an annual rent fixed at less than one euro for needy Catholic citizens of Augsburg who pray three times daily for the founder. Beyond the Fuggerei, Elias Holl's Rathaus of 1620 and the gilded Goldener Saal mark the city's Renaissance high point, and the Augsburg Water Management System was inscribed by UNESCO in 2019 for its waterworks, fountains, and canals dating back to the fifteenth century.
Most visitors arrive by train from Munich, forty minutes west on the regional service from Hauptbahnhof. The historic centre is compact and walkable, and the Romantic Road, the tourist route from Würzburg to Füssen, passes through the city. The Fuggerei is open daily with a small entry fee that funds its upkeep, and the Rathaus Goldener Saal can be visited most afternoons. Augsburg's Christkindlesmarkt, held in front of the Rathaus in Advent, is one of the older Christmas markets in Bavaria and draws visitors through the cold weeks of December.