Angel in almond-shaped mandorla frame, flanked by soaring medieval towers. German fresco, painted in about 1400. On the underside of a rounded Romanesque window arch in the Blasiuskapelle or Chapel of Saint Blaise in the Burggarten or Castle Garden at Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Bavaria, Germany.
Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Bavaria, Germany: an angel framed by a painted almond-shaped mandorla, flanked by soaring medieval towers, looks down from the rounded top of a Romanesque window arch within the Blasiuskapelle (Chapel of Saint Blaise) in the Burggarten or Castle Garden. The building was probably once the Upper Ducal House or reception hall of the Stauferburg or Reichsburg, the Hohenstaufen imperial fortress built here in 1142, which was otherwise devastated by an earthquake in 1356. In September 1400 It was converted into a chapel dedicated to saints Blasius, Sebastian and Fabian and its surviving frescoes date from this period. The chapel now serves as a memorial to the military dead of two world wars. Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Red Castle above the Tauber), in the Ansbach district of Mittelfranken (Middle Franconia) in northern Bavaria, is world-famous for its well-preserved medieval old town and is one of only three towns or cities in Germany whose defensive walls survive completely intact. The first castle here was built by the counts of Comburg-Rothenburg, but when they died out in 1116, their properties passed to the new Duke of Franconia, Konrad von Hohenstaufen (). In 1142, six years after his coronation as Konrad III, King of Germany, he began building the Stauferburg on a raised tongue of land dominating the River Tauber. Rothenburg, founded in 1170, became a Free Imperial City in 1274, placing it under the direct control of the Holy Roman Emperor. It thrived partly because it was the junction of two important pilgrimage routes, one of them linking Denmark and Rome, and under the rule of mayor Heinrich Toppler in the late 1300s, it became one of the largest cities in the Empire. It now attracts more than one million tourists a year.
Size: 3008px × 2000px
Location: Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Bavaria, Germany
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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