Tübingen; Saturday, 20 September, 2025

After breakfast I headed out of the hotel and over to the bus station in front of the Hauptbahnhof to pick up the bus out to the city’s botanical gardens. Whilst they are only about 3Km outside of town they are also quite a way above the city centre on the side of a hill, and I didn’t fancy a hefty up hill walk so early in the day.

I arrived at the Botanical Gardens a few minutes after they had opened and consequently for some time pretty much had them to myself as I was able to wander around in peace and tranquillity barely seeing another person. After doing a full circuit of the gardens I headed back towards the greenhouses which were now also open and had a look around them.

Having seen the gardens, and with the number of visitors quickly increasing I left the gardens and rather than take the bus I started on the 3Km walk back downhill into the city centre, along the way passing the Landesmittelpunkt, a monument to the exact centre point of the state of Baden-Württemberg.

I grabbed a quick lunch in town before wandering through the crowds to the Stadtmuseum and had a look around that, though quite a bit of the museum was closed for the weekend as it was being used as storage for the many stalls in the area.

From the city museum I wandered back through the city centre, past the small segment of the old city walls that area still standing and over to the Stiftskirche St. Georg. This is the main church in the city centre, located in the centre of the Holzmarkt and inside its home to the tombs of some of the Dukes of Württemberg, Tübingen having a one time served as the second city of the Duchy (behind Stuttgart).

The church tower is also open to explore, so naturally I had to climb that to take in the views across the city and along the Neckar River before heading back down into the church to continue looking around that before leaving the church and heading down to river level and the Hölderlinturm

The tower was once part of the ancient city walls and was later converted into a house. Between 1807 and his death in 1843 it was home to Friedrich Hölderlin one of the leading German poets and philosophers of his day.

The tower overlooks the Neckar River as well as the large Neckarinsel or Neckar Island which sits in the middle of the river stretching from the Neckarbrücke west upstream ending just beyond the site of the castle. Today it’s a public park and a very pleasant place to wander through – especially with the almost complete shade offered by the large number of trees on the island on what was becoming a very warm afternoon.

Close to the end of Neckar Island is a small bridge that links back to both sides of the river, though on the North bank you are right below the Schloßberg, the hill that the castle sits upon, but thankfully at this point there is pedestrian and cycle tunnel that has been cut into the hill, taking you all the way through to the Old Town on the other side of the hill so you don’t have to slog up and over it. Even more conveniently on the opposite side is a bus stop for regular buses back round to the Hauptbahnhof and my hotel so I could head back there to freshen up after a very hot day of walking.

Cleaned up and feeling fresher I popped back out of the hotel to grab some dinner before heading down onto the top end of Neckarinsel to take some night photos of the buildings of the old town, then it was back to the hotel for a quick nightcap and then to bed.