The angel''s leg
Crossing from paint into sculpture, on the eastern face.
W. Bulach — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Kasa Fue — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Kasa Fue — CC BY-SA 4.0 · John Samuel — CC BY-SA 4.0
A building standing on an **artificial island in the middle of the Regnitz**, crossed by bridges from both banks — one of the strangest architectural situations in Europe, and the result of a dispute. The story goes that the **Bishop of Bamberg** refused the city land for a town hall, both banks of the river being his. So the citizens drove piles into the riverbed and filled between them until they had **made an island**, and built their hall on it — on ground the bishop did not own. The story may be a later embellishment, but the site is real and legible: the building genuinely splits the river. Its faces are covered in eighteenth-century **baroque frescoes** of figures and painted architecture in perspective. And the detail people look for: **an angel''s leg** in one fresco **projects from the wall as actual sculpture** — crossing from paint into three dimensions. Look for it on the eastern face. Attached to the middle of the building is a **small half-timbered house** that looks as though it came from somewhere else entirely. Note: inside is a porcelain museum (the Ludwig collection) — but **the exterior is the point**.
Crossing from paint into sculpture, on the eastern face.
Attached to the middle, and looking entirely out of place.
The building splitting the river, free from both banks.
Obere Brücke 1, Bamberg
A **smoked beer** whose malt is dried over a **beechwood** fire rather than by hot air, giving it a pronounced smoky flavour like smoked meat — a taste that divides people instantly, loved or refused from the first sip. Its origin is technical rather than culinary: **all beer was smoky** before the nineteenth century, because malt could only be dried over direct fire. Then indirect drying was invented and the smoke vanished from European beer — **except in Bamberg**, where a few breweries deliberately kept the old method. The best known are **Schlenkerla** and **Spezial**, both still operating in the historic centre. ⚠ For anyone who does not drink alcohol: this is an alcoholic drink, but the breweries themselves are historic buildings worth looking at from outside, and Bamberg also has **mineral waters and local non-alcoholic drinks**.
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