Regensburg stacks 1,900 years into one street plan: a Roman legion gate from AD 179, the hall where the Perpetual Imperial Diet sat until 1806, and a Jewish quarter erased in 1519 that survives underground. Three days follow that layering.
Built in AD 179 as the north gate of the legionary fortress Castra Regina, this is one of only two surviving Roman gates north of the Alps. The limestone arch and tower are embedded in the Bischofshof brewery wall.
Housed in a former Minorite friary, the city museum runs from Stone Age finds through the legion camp to the Free Imperial City. The Roman rooms hold the AD 179 founding inscription of Castra Regina. Tue-Sun 10:00-16:00.
The Perpetual Imperial Diet met here from 1663 to 1806. Guided tours enter the Reichssaal under its 1408 timber ceiling and descend to the medieval torture chamber. English tours run daily from the tourist office in the same building.
This square was the Carolingian ducal seat. The Herzogshof keeps a rare 13th-century Gothic double window, and the adjoining Römerturm is an 11th-century residential keep despite its name. Open square, free to wander at any hour.
Ludwig I's marble hall of fame, built 1830-1842 on the Parthenon model above the Danube, honours more than 130 German-speaking figures in busts and plaques. Climb the 358 terrace steps for the river view. Daily 09:00-18:00 April-October.
A plain memorial marks the Colosseum dance hall, used from March 1945 as a Flossenbürg satellite camp where roughly 400 prisoners cleared and repaired the bombed railway yards. Interpretive panels stand outdoors, accessible any time.
The Thurn und Taxis family ran the imperial postal monopoly from 1748 and converted the abbey into a 500-room palace. Tours cover the state rooms, the Rococo ballroom and the Romanesque cloister; treasury and carriage museum are ticketed separately.
Oskar Schindler lived at Am Watmarkt 5 from 1945 to 1950, running black-market trade while awaiting emigration. A bronze plaque on the house records the years. The lane behind it keeps its cramped medieval proportions.
An underground site beneath the square: cellars of the Jewish quarter destroyed in the 1519 expulsion, Roman officers' quarters, and a Nazi-era air-raid bunker. Entry by guided tour only, lasting about 45 minutes.
Built on a Carolingian ducal chapel of around 875, the Alte Kapelle keeps Romanesque masonry under a Rococo interior added in the 1750s by the Wessobrunn stuccoists. Free entry outside Mass times.
Founded by Irish Benedictine monks around 1090, this Romanesque basilica carries the Schottenportal, a north doorway crowded with carved beasts and figures whose meaning scholars still dispute. A glass housing protects it and lets you study it up close.
The Ostentor of about 1300 is the best-preserved gate of the medieval city wall, its portcullis groove and carved coats of arms still legible. Ostengasse behind it was the road to Vienna and retains its narrow artisan houses.