2016/05 Europe cruise - Würzburg |
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Thursday May 12th
There was a big bump in the middle of the night. Our guess was that the boat’s rubber bumpers had whacked a lock wall, but some of the Californians had woken up thinking they were in an earthquake. We had a sunny morning but it had turned overcast by the time of the day’s trip.
We were docked on the Wűrzburg waterfront. Wűrzburg, long a university town, had largely escaped war damage until it was nearly obliterated in a 20 minute bombing raid in 1945. The destruction was reportedly worse even than that experienced in Dresden.
On the hill above us was a magnificent fortress, but it wasn’t our planned destination. Instead, buses took us a short distance up to the Bishop’s Residenz, where we began our tour. The prince-bishop previously occupied that fortress on the hill overlooking the town, but about 1720 he moved into town and built this palace. It looks externally as if it was modeled on 
Versailles, a case of keeping up with the Bourbons, the French royalty. Outside it has similar baroque exteriors, fountains, and formal 
gardens.
Inside, it is really spectacular, beginning with its grand staircase and the massive ceiling fresco depicting the people of the world’s four continents. From there the reception rooms just get more and more elaborate as the visitor gets closer to an audience with the bishop himself. Photography is not allowed inside so I have just shown a few pictures here from the Internet: the staircase, the Imperial Hall, and the Mirror Cabinet, a room of mirrors with paintings behind the 
glass, just dazzling.
The prince-bishops didn’t enjoy their palace for long. When Napoleon conquered this part of Europe he separated church and state, abolishing their position and handing the Residenz to one of his allies.
Only the reception rooms and apartments have been restored and are open to the public; the rest of the enormous building is occupied by 
museum archives and the university. Like the town, most was destroyed by bombs and the ensuing firestorm. After the war the remains were protected by an American officer charged with protecting the art from looters and the weather. Most of what we were seeing was a laborious recreation of the original based on paintings and photographs.
Our tour moved into the town, which is a mixture of old historic buildings, rebuilt after the war, and newer construction. The town has some unusual sculptures.
Some of our group were going on an optional tour to Rothenburg, but we opted to spend the time by ourselves. There were optional tours on most days, some replacing the included tour and some additional. We hadn’t signed up for any of these partly because of the cost but mostly so that we’d have free time.
We walked down to the Main Brűcke, the old river bridge with its statues along the parapet. It looked strikingly similar to Prague’s 
Charles Bridge which is similarly adorned. The statues were added in the 1700s by the prince-bishops, who presumably were trying to keep up with the Habsburgs too. Below were these rapids, a rare sign of the river’s wild origins.
From there we walked along the River Main to the Ludwig Bridge, where the Ingvi had docked. From the bridge we could see the Ingvi’s sun deck. At the far end, the captain’s bridge and the cranes were now up, but the rest was still dismantled, laid out like a model airplane kit. 
We hadn’t had time at the Residenz to take a look at the gardens, so after lunch we headed back there through a succession of public parks. These parks, and others we saw in Germany, are a welcome break from the traffic, and are mainly grass and trees. They don’t seem to mow very often so there are some impressive shows of daisies.
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Wurzburg |
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We found the back gate to the Residenz’s gardens, initially landscaped like an English garden but then increasingly formal as we got closer to the building. Flowers were organized in geometric patterns, conifers sharpened to a point, turf groomed, fountains gushed, and statues stood guard. We tried to get up high on the defensive walls to get a picture of the entire garden with a backdrop of the 
palace but the sheer scale defeated us. Next time we’ll have to pack a drone.
Afterwards we wandered through to buy some postcards and find a post office for stamps. We got lost a few times but walked downhill until we found the river. The boat took off about 6pm towards our next destination, still on the Main canal.