Traveling to the Past...

One of the many places students traveled to over the last few weekends, on an individual trip, was Rothenburg, a city in Germany, which has remained almost exactly as it was centuries ago, a medieval walled town with cobblestoned streets and archaic architecture. It was even featured in the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, as the buildings and streets of the imaginary barony of Vulgaria.

The original castle of Rothenburg was built in 950, and the city itself was built in 1170. In 1274, it became an imperial city, and grew to become one of the 20 largest cities in the Holy Roman Empire (5.500 people inside the walls, and 14,000 people in the surrounding territory). During the Thirty Years' War, the Catholic general Count Tilly attacked and captured the city to quarter his troops in it, and then left the town in the winter; it had been devastated economically and population-wise, and the Black Plague did even more harm.

In the 1880s, Romanticists discovered the town and sparked the tourism industry which continues to flourish in it. The town was also occupied in 1945 by Nazi forces, bombed by the Allies, and then occupied by the Americans.

It is continually being restored, and remains a beautiful way to look back into the past of Germany.