Regensburg
— — the medieval city the Danube curls around.
Not only on a wall.
“Where the Danube reaches its northernmost point and the Regen river slips in from the Bavarian Forest, Regensburg kept its medieval street plan almost untouched through two world wars. The Old Stone Bridge has carried foot traffic across the river since 1146. The sausage kitchen on the south bank has been feeding bridge-builders and bargemen for almost as long.
Regensburg, 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.
Regensburg sits at the confluence of the Danube, Regen, and Naab rivers in the Upper Palatinate of eastern Bavaria, at the northernmost bend of the Danube's 2,850-kilometre course. The Romans founded Castra Regina here in AD 179 under Marcus Aurelius as the legionary fortress of Legio III Italica. The Old Town and Stadtamhof, with roughly 1,000 protected monuments inside an almost-intact medieval street plan, were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006. Today some 150,000 residents share the city, including the students of the University of Regensburg founded in 1962.
The Steinerne Brücke, completed in 1146 after eleven years of construction, was for nearly 800 years the only fixed crossing of the Danube between Ulm and Vienna and served as the model for later medieval bridges across Europe, including London's. Its sixteen surviving arches still carry pedestrians across the river. A short walk west, the twin spires of St Peter's Cathedral rise 105 metres above the Domplatz, completed in 1869 after more than six centuries of building, and house the Regensburger Domspatzen, the cathedral's boys' choir founded in 975.
At Regensburg the Danube swings to its northernmost point before turning southeast toward Vienna and the Black Sea, 2,400 kilometres downstream. The Regen and the Naab join within the city limits, doubling the river's volume in a single bend. River cruise boats from Passau and Vienna dock at the Donaumarkt quay; flat-bottomed Zille barges still tie up beside the Historische Wurstkuchl, the sausage kitchen on the south bank that has fed bridge workers since the twelfth century and is among the oldest continuously operated restaurants in the world.