Limburg

Yesterday we drove to Limburg, which is an hour down the Autobahn on the way to Mainz. We had seen its cathedral from the road on the way to Mainz and had to go back to check it out.

We have a new rental car now - an Alfa Romeo station wagon. It's fairly pretty for a station wagon and a lot of people get excited about Alfas, but we have mixed feelings about it.




On the upside, it goes very fast. We had some good opportunities to test it on the Autobahn and David got it up over 100 mph. It also has an astounding array of bells and whistles. One of the features is a radar sensor that tells you how close you are to backing into something - it beeps faster and faster and lights flash on a diagram of the car. Handy!

It also has built in sat-nav in the dash, which is very nice but it took us quite awhile to figure out how to work it, mainly because the buttons were in German. The heater settings are not very intuitive, the windshield wipers are complicated, and it took us a long time to learn how to change the radio station. And at one point we accidentally called roadside assistance. But overall we're enjoying it and it's fun to try something new for a week.

In Limburg, we found convenient but somewhat dingy parking at the City Parkhaus and ventured out into the cold. Limburg is a great town. It's on a hillside overlooking a river and the old town is very well preserved. Winding cobblestone streets are lined with crooked half-timbered houses, and lovely smells greeted us as we walked past old restaurants. (Speaking of smell, this Limburg is not the home of Limburger cheese. That comes from a region of Belgium called Limburg.)




Limburg Cathedral is perched on a rock at the highest point of the town. Some really great views of it can be had from across the river below, but we never found the right spot and the weather wasn't very pretty anyway. We hope to make it back again on a sunnier day.



The cathedral is Late Romanesque, which is one of the reasons I was excited to see it. Not many cathedrals have this colorful paint job anymore, but it does reflect its original appearance and helps protect the stone at this exposed location.


The door has some great Romanesque (12th century) sculptures, colorfully painted like all of them once were. The man sitting on the right is thought to be the builder of the church.


The interior is very impressive, with slightly pointed arches indicating that Romanesque is on its way out and Gothic will be invented soon.


Soaring pillars and ceiling under the central tower.


The cathedral is filled with faded murals from the 13th century, including this ceiling painting of the archangels Michael and Gabriel.


One of the coolest sights was this tomb of the church's founder (910 AD), Count Konrad Kurzbold. The sculptures on the supports (four clerics, a lion and a bear) are 11th century; the slab and effigy are 13th century.


Count Konrad



The four clerics were some pretty goofy-looking fellas!


Another highlight was this 13th-century baptismal font, covered in strange and interesting sculptures.


Some apparent smooching going on at the bottom of the font. Who are they? No idea! This is one of the reasons I love medieval art - it's always so intriguing, like a window into another world.