Send Gift Baskets to Esslingen am Neckar, Germany

Stadtkirche St. Dionys

Esslingen’s Protestant city church commands the Marktplatz from the south and is the most memorable landmark on the skyline. The church has High Gothic architecture, mainly from the 13th century, but was built over two much older churches from the 700s and 900s.

Altes Rathaus

The beguiling old town hall creates a different impression depending on how you approach it. The south facade is one of the outstanding examples of Alemannic half-timbered architecture and dates from the building’s origins in the 1420s.

Frauenkirche

Claimed to be the first Gothic hall church in Southwest Germany, the Frauenkirche required almost 200 years of construction before it was completed in 1515. Amazingly, this makes it Esslingen’s newest church! At 72 meters high, the tower is a wonder of Gothic masonry with almost ephemeral tracery patterns.

Villa Merkel

Esslingen’s art gallery is in a Historicist villa designed for the industrialist Oscar Merkel in 1873 and was the first building in southern Germany to be constructed with concrete.

Esslinger Castle

Amid rows of vines above the city, these fortifications were never a castle in the sense of being the residence for noble families. Instead, they had a purely defensive job and were repeatedly called into action to keep armies and raiders out.

Half-Timbered Houses

Together with Göttingen and Limburg an der Lahn, Esslingen has the oldest half-timbered houses in Germany.

Marktplatz

One of the few places in Esslingen that isn’t historical, the market square is where the Katharinenspital, the city’s first Hospital, used to stand. This was pulled down in 1811 when Esslingen grew beyond its city walls.

Franziskanerkirche

The Franciscan order appeared in Esslingen around 1230, and work started on a gigantic church in 1270. The monument was completed in short order, as the stained garden glass windows have been dated to 1320.

Museum St. Dionys

If you are in Esslingen on a Sunday afternoon, you should jump at the chance to go down into the excavated crypt of the Stadtkirche. There are haunting relics of the first two churches of St Vitalis, dating from the 8th and the 10th centuries.

Klein-Venedig

One sight that captures everyone’s heart in Esslingen is Klein Venedig (Little Venice), where the branches of the Neckar, the Rossneckar, and the Wehrneckar are like Venetian canals.