Audio Guide Tübingen

Tübingen

Places researched in this city

A selection of the 24 places we've researched in this city. The full set is in the Parroo app.

• Renaissance castle
• Gothic collegiate church
• Medieval towers
• Historic squares
• Literary sites
• River promenades

• 01

  Hohentübingen Castle

  What looks like a Renaissance palace from the outside conceals something far older: a fortress first besieged by Emperor Henry IV in 1078, and now home to a museum whose prize exhibit is an ice-age horse figurine carved roughly 40,000 years ago. Duke Ulrich transformed the medieval stronghold into its current four-winged form between 1507 and 1550, adding the ornate Ulrichstor portal that still greets visitors today.

• 02

  Collegiate Church of St. George

  The Württemberg dukes chose this late Gothic hall church as their burial site, and the family tombs still line the choir today. Built between 1470 and 1490, the church's 56-metre tower anchors Tübingen's skyline, while stained glass by master glazier Peter Hemmel and a rare surviving Lettner screen from 1490 make the interior worth a long look.

• 03

  Neckar Front

  The row of tall gabled houses along the Neckar's south bank is partly built on top of Tübingen's original medieval city wall, fragments of which are still visible. A 1962 local ordinance locked the appearance of the whole stretch in place, which is why the view from the opposite bank looks almost unchanged from photographs taken a century ago.

• 04

  Tübingen Market Square

  Trading has happened on this cobbled square since at least 1191, and the Town Hall facing it still carries the astronomical clock that Johannes Stöffler built in 1511. The Neptune Fountain, designed in 1617, stands at the centre, and a weekly market keeps the square in use much as it has been for eight centuries.

• 05

  Hölderlin Tower

  Poet Friedrich Hölderlin spent the last 36 years of his life in this medieval tower, from 1807 until his death in 1843, cared for by the carpenter Ernst Zimmer and his family. The tower had served as a dye works, brewery, and bathhouse before becoming his home, and after an 1875 fire it was rebuilt with the rounded form it has today.

• 06

  Student Prison

  Tucked into a vaulted undercroft at Münzgasse 20, this two-celled academic jail was in active use from 1515 to 1845, and the students who served time there left behind walls covered in graffiti that is still legible today. Because the university held its own jurisdiction over students, the town's secular courts had no say in who ended up here.

• 07

  Bebenhausen Monastery and Palace

  Founded around 1183 as a family burial site by Count Palatine Rudolf I of Tübingen, this Cistercian complex in the Schönbuch forest survived the Reformation by reinventing itself as a royal hunting lodge, a role it kept well into the 20th century. The summer refectory, a soaring Gothic hall, and the crossing tower added between 1407 and 1409 are among the best-preserved medieval monastic spaces in southwest Germany.

• 08

  17 more places to discover

  In the Parroo app