Rathausplatz
Fully painted façades and carved oriel windows.
Franzfoto — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Countdan — CC BY-SA 4.0 · JoachimKohler-HB — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Patrick Nouhailler's… — CC BY-SA 3.0
Yes, and this is the best shape for a full day: train from Zurich HB to **Schaffhausen** (about forty minutes), then the **Rhine Falls** in the morning before they fill, then a short train to **Stein am Rhein** in the afternoon (about half an hour). In boat season — mid-April to mid-October — replace that second train with the river sailing between Schaffhausen and Stein am Rhein, roughly two hours and the loveliest part of the whole day.
Before eleven in the morning or after four in the afternoon; between those hours the groups and the boats pile into a square too small to hold them. Outside July and August the town is far calmer: May, June, September and early October are its best months. In winter the boats and the museum close and visitors thin out sharply — but the painted façades remain, and an almost empty town has a beauty of its own.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.
A small town of barely three and a half thousand people, set where the **Rhine** leaves Lake Constance, about an hour by train from Zurich. Its fame rests on one thing: the old town. On **Rathausplatz** and in the lanes around it, almost every façade carries a full painted scheme — historical and mythological scenes, house names and signs — beneath carved wooden oriel windows. The town won the **first ever Wakker Prize** for architectural conservation in 1972. Above the square stand two monuments: **St George's Abbey**, moved to this site by Emperor Henry II around 1007, which turned a fishing village into a trading town; its late-Gothic cloister and festival hall hold murals from about 1500 counted among the most important surviving north of the Alps, and it is now a museum. On the hill sits **Hohenklingen Castle**, standing since roughly 1200 some two hundred metres above the river; the walk up takes half an hour or more, the castle grounds are free, and its tower can be climbed during the restaurant's opening hours. Be ready for crowds: the town is very small and fills at midday when the coach parties and the Rhine boats arrive together, which makes the square hard going in July and August. The remedy is simple — come early, or stay into the evening once the groups have gone. Walking the town costs nothing, half a day covers it comfortably, and the natural pairing is with the **Rhine Falls** near Schaffhausen in one outing.
Fully painted façades and carved oriel windows.
A Gothic cloister and murals from around 1500.
From about 1200, 200 m above the river; grounds free.
Rathausplatz, 8260 Stein am Rhein, Canton Schaffhausen