Every design for Bamberg

Bamberg takes its name from Babenberch, the castle that stood here when the town was first recorded, and for a time in the Middle Ages it sat at the very centre of the Holy Roman Empire. Emperor Henry II made it the seat of a new diocese and was buried here beside his wife Kunigunde, and the hills and river islands he knew still shape the town today.

The Bamberger Dom crowns the Domberg with its four towers, flanked by the Alte Hofhaltung and the Neue Residenz, while down below, between the two arms of the Regnitz, lies the Inselstadt with the Altes Rathaus. Over on the far side, the market gardens of the Gärtnerstadt still grow vegetables inside the town. People here know exactly where they belong: island, hill or garden quarter, and which brewery is theirs.

Growing up in Bamberg means taking all that beauty for granted: cycling past houses that tourists photograph, meeting friends by the water in Klein-Venedig, climbing to Kloster Michelsberg on a clear evening. The map holds that childhood in its lines, from the river arms to the cathedral hill.