Explore Regensburg

The Scots Monastery church of St. James was built between 1175 and 1180 for Irish Benedictine monks who had settled in Regensburg in the 11th century; Scottish monks took over in 1577. Its north portal, the Schottenportal, carries an extensive Romanesque relief. The complex is now a Catholic seminary and its church is not generally open to visitors.

St. Emmeram's Palace occupies the former Benedictine abbey of St. Emmeram, which passed to the Thurn und Taxis princely family in 1810 after secularisation. Architect Max Schultze converted it into a residential palace between 1883 and 1888. Guided tours visit the state rooms, the medieval cloister, and the Marstall carriage museum and treasury in the former stables.

The Old Town Hall is a medieval complex built in stages from the 13th century, its tower rising 55 metres above Regensburg's old town. From 1663 to 1806 it hosted the Perpetual Imperial Diet, the Holy Roman Empire's standing assembly of envoys. The Reichstagsmuseum, opened in 1963, shows the historic Reichssaal with its Gothic wooden ceiling and the former council chambers.

Regensburg Cathedral is the seat of the Catholic Diocese of Regensburg and the city's main Gothic church. Construction began in 1273 after a fire destroyed its Romanesque predecessor; the nave was largely complete by 1520, while the two 105-metre west towers were finished only in 1869. The interior holds stained glass from the 13th to the 19th centuries.

The Historic Sausage Kitchen is a small restaurant beside the Stone Bridge, in a building whose origins date to 1135 as the construction office for the bridge. Since the early 1800s it has served charcoal-grilled bratwurst made from pork shoulder, with sauerkraut and mustard, from a tiny kitchen with wooden benches along the riverbank.

The Stone Bridge was built across the Danube between 1135 and 1146, replacing an earlier wooden crossing. Its 308.7-metre span on sixteen arches was considered an engineering feat and served as a model for later stone bridges elsewhere in Europe. A 14th-century gate tower survives at its southern end; the bridge has carried only pedestrians and cyclists since 2008.

The Porta Praetoria is the surviving northern gate of Castra Regina, the Roman legionary fortress built under Emperor Marcus Aurelius around 179 CE. A roughly eleven-metre tower of large limestone ashlar blocks still stands, now built into the walls of the Bishop's Court. Restored between 2015 and 2017, its interior can be visited on guided tours.

The Old Chapel is a collegiate church founded in 1002 by Emperor Henry II on the site of a Carolingian chapel built over a Roman temple to Juno, making it one of Bavaria's oldest Christian sites. Its plain exterior hides an interior remodelled in the 18th century with elaborate Rococo stucco and ceiling frescoes; Pope Paul VI raised it to basilica minor in 1964.

The Museum of Bavarian History opened on the Danube waterfront in Regensburg in June 2019, in a purpose-built angular structure. Its permanent exhibition spans roughly 2,500 square metres and traces Bavarian history from the founding of the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1806 to the present, through about a thousand objects including King Ludwig II's sled.