Oettingen i.Bay.: Residence Town on the Ries Crater

Oettingen i.Bay. lies on the northern edge of the Ries Crater, a meteorite crater about 25 kilometres across. The town offers a range of highlights for visitors: residence and half-timbered architecture, a seasonal Easter tradition, guided tours covering the town’s history and white stork nests, and insights into how the Ries was formed. This gives you several ways to explore Oettingen, depending on the topics that interest you most.

Residence History and the Old Townscape

The market square is the centre of Oettingen’s town centre. Its eastern side features Baroque-style gables, while half-timbered gables line the western side. The town hall is one of the most magnificent half-timbered buildings in Swabia. The 400-year-old Königsturm adds another historic landmark: it is Oettingen’s town gate in the direction of Nördlingen.

The residence palace adds another dimension to the town’s history. Mathias Weiß of Kassel built it from 1679 to 1687 in the late Renaissance style for the Oettingen-Spielberg line. Along with the Baroque gables and half-timbered buildings around the market square, the palace offers another architectural landmark. Oettingen is thus a place to see a range of historic architectural styles and periods.

Museum, Easter Fountains and Guided Tours

The Oettingen Local History Museum has been in existence since 1908. As a regional museum with a specialist focus, it displays a rich collection assembled through donations from local residents and illustrates life in times past. While the buildings draw attention to the town’s layout, the collection focuses on how people lived in earlier times.

The ten Easter fountains are a seasonal highlight that returns every year. They are decorated for Easter during the week before Easter and the week after. The long-standing tradition includes garlands of fresh greenery, hand-painted eggs, flowers and pastries. If you would like to include this custom in your travel plans, plan your visit around these two weeks.

A guided tour of Oettingen, a residence town steeped in history, covers more than 1,200 years of town history and takes you through picturesque lanes and streets. Check the booking details before your trip. From March to September, visitors can also discover Oettingen’s many white stork nests on a guided tour. This seasonal offering has a different focus from the general town-history tour.

The Ries Crater and the Wörnitz

The Oettingen Geopark Information Centre features an interactive “Clock of Earth History”. It illustrates the development of the continents and the effects of the Ries meteorite impact. This installation highlights both changes to the Earth over vast stretches of time and the impact’s consequences in the Ries.

The Oettingen Wörnitz outdoor swimming pool is also part of the local landscape: it is on an island in the Wörnitz and is one of Bavaria’s last river baths. Here, the river is a feature of the setting, unlike at the Geopark Information Centre, which focuses on Earth’s history and the meteorite impact.

Oettingen within the wider Donau-Ries travel destination

Within the wider Donau-Ries travel destination, the district describes Geopark Ries, with the Ries Crater formed by a meteorite impact, as a tourist attraction. Other cultural themes are specifically associated with other places in Donau-Ries: Nördlingen’s medieval town wall is fully preserved and can be walked along in its entirety. The Nördlingen Town Museum covers the life and beliefs of the people there, changes during the Reformation, the Thirty Years’ War and the 1634 Battle of Nördlingen. A model made of around 6,000 tin soldiers illustrates the battle. These examples add regional topics to the picture of Oettingen without replacing its local highlights.

Discover more destinations: Monheim, Donauwörth, Wallerstein, Rain, Ehingen Am Ries, Nördlingen, Mertingen, Oberndorf Am Lech

View the wider travel overview: Donau-Ries.