Nordlingen, Germany, Part 1

Located about an hour's drive south of Rothenburg ob der Tauber lies the town of Nordlingen. It is worth making this stop on southern Germany's Romantic Road because it is the only town in Germany with a completely preserved medieval wall. In addition, the extraordinary feature is that the town is nestled in the impact crater of a meteor that struck the earth here many millennia ago. Hence, the wall's circular shape.  

We arrived mid-morning, hoping to get a spot at this Park4Night. Once again, we got the last spot with electricity plus the bonus of shade. What a blessing! Other services included water, restrooms, chemical toilet dump, and gray water dump. 

This map gives an excellent visual of the circular shape of Nordlingen. The Park4Night is located at the motorhome icon on the left side. It took a short walk from our parked campervan to enter the wall through the gate behind us (below). 

Below - first view of the inside of Nordlingen's wall. 

Many German towns feature a 3-D, bronze model of the old town. The prominent feature in the middle of Nordlingen is St. Georg's Church, which is where we were headed. 

It was easy to find St. Georg's Church; we kept Daniel's Tower, which is 90 m tall, in sight and arrived at the central town square in no time. 

Below is the view across the square from the church. The tiny white dot on the top of the righthand building's roof is a white stork. These are a favorite European bird of mine. I was thrilled to see more than one nest in Nordlingen.

Below is a closer view of the white stork on its nest. They winter in Africa and then migrate back to Europe to breed.

Next stop, the interior of St.Georg's Church where we sat in a pew for a little while to listen to live organ music. Then we stepped out a side door to access the 350 steps up to the top of Daniel's Tower. 

The climb began with spiral, stone steps which are common in medieval buildings. After a while, the spiral steps ended, and regular straight flights of wooden steps replaced them.

Between flights, landings provided a place to rest or let others pass by us. Below is a view down through the many flights of stairs. 

Near the top of the tower, where we paid for our tickets to take the final steps up, were displayed these two photos of stork nests. So fun to see up-close images of white stork chicks.

The low ridge that encircles Nordlingen provides some of the evidence of the meteor strike. You can see it along the horizon in the following  photos taken from the top of Daniel's Tower. 

You can also see a bit of the wall and a tower below. I will post about our walk on the wall in Nordlingen Part 2 - stay tuned!