Key facts

• Bamberg Cathedral (Bamberger Dom): the dominant monument of the city — a four-towered Romanesque-Gothic cathedral (begun 1004, largely rebuilt after fire 1185–1237) set on Cathedral Hill at the city’s highest point; the cathedral contains the tomb of Emperor Heinrich II (died 1024) and his wife Empress Kunigunde — the only German Holy Roman Emperor buried in Germany rather than Rome; it also contains the tomb of Pope Clement II (died 1047, buried here because he was Bishop of Bamberg before becoming pope) — the only papal tomb north of the Alps; the celebrated “Bamberg Horseman” (Bamberger Reiter, c. 1235), a life-size equestrian sculpture of a young king on horseback, is set in a niche of the cathedral interior and is considered the most perfect medieval equestrian statue; its identity remains unknown (attributed to Saint Stephen of Hungary, a Hohenstaufen emperor, or an ideal portrait of Christian kingship)
• The Altes Rathaus (Old Town Hall): the most eccentric building in Bamberg — a late Gothic building (14th–15th century) set on an artificial island in the middle of the Regnitz River, connected to both banks by bridges; the building was placed on the island because the burgher council of Bamberg could not agree with the Bishop (who owned the city’s land) on a site; according to legend, the burghers drove piles into the river and built on the resulting island, which was technically owned by neither party; the exterior is covered with Baroque trompe-l’oeil frescoes (18th century) of architectural elements and figures that appear to project three-dimensionally from the walls; a ceramic leg (a real leg, not a painted one) projects from the fresco over the bridge arch, placed to confuse viewers about the line between real and painted space
• The Neue Residenz and the Rose Garden: the 17th-century Baroque palace of the Prince-Bishops of Bamberg, built 1695–1704 by the architect Johann Leonhard Dientzenhofer; the Imperial Hall (Kaisersaal) has ceiling frescoes by Melchior Steidl showing the transfer of the imperial insignia (a claim to imperial legitimacy); the adjacent Rose Garden (Rosengarten) — a formal Baroque garden of 4,500 roses on the terrace behind the palace, with a distant view over the red-tiled roofs of Bamberg — was praised by Hegel as “the most beautiful garden in Germany” during his Bamberg residency (1807–08, when he was editor of the Bamberger Zeitung newspaper)
• Bamberg smoked beer (Rauchbier): Bamberg is the world capital of smoked beer — a style of dark lager in which the barley malt is dried over open beechwood fires, giving the beer a distinct smoky, meaty flavour that tastes like liquid bacon to the uninitiated; the style dates to the pre-industrial period when all malting used open fire, and survived in Bamberg because the traditional Franconian breweries maintained the method when the rest of Bavaria switched to kiln-dried malt in the 19th century; the Schlenkerla Brewery (founded 1678, operating continuously since, serving from the Gothic cellar of the historic Ausschank since 1877) produces the most famous Rauchbier (the Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen); the Bamberg Reinheitsgebot-compliant brewing tradition supports 9 breweries in the city proper and over 200 within 40 km — the highest density of breweries per square kilometre in the world
• The Bamberg Cathedral School tradition: Bamberg was a centre of learning from its founding — the cathedral school founded by Heinrich II produced several influential scholars and was one of the most important intellectual centres in early medieval Germany; Bamberg’s reputation as a “city of the educated” continued through the Baroque period (the Jesuit university, 1647–1803) and into the present (the University of Bamberg, founded 1647, refounded 1972)
• Heritage: UNESCO World Heritage Site, Old Town of Bamberg, inscribed 1993
• GPS: 49.8988° N, 10.9028° E