Audio Guide Ulm

Ulm

Places researched in this city

A selection of the 29 places we've researched in this city. The full set is in the Parroo app.

• Gothic minster
• Medieval quarters
• Fortress architecture
• Ice Age art
• Design heritage
• Riverside walks

• 01

  Ulm Minster

  The foundation stone was laid in 1377 before a crowd reportedly exceeding 20,000 people, even though Ulm's entire population was under 10,000 at the time. The resulting spire, completed only in 1890, reaches 161.53 metres and remains the tallest church tower in Germany.

• 02

  Ulm Town Hall

  What looks like a proud civic building started life in 1357 as a cloth warehouse; the city council only moved in officially by 1419. The richly frescoed facade and the 16th-century astronomical clock on the east wall make it one of the most photographed corners of the old town.

• 03

  Fisher Quarter

  Fishermen, tanners, and boatmen built this riverside district along the Blau during the Middle Ages, and the quarter's timber-framed houses still lean at visible angles over the water. Its annual jousting tournament on the river, the Fischerstechen, keeps the medieval rivalry alive.

• 04

  Lion Man

  Carved from mammoth ivory roughly 40,000 years ago, this 31.1-centimetre hybrid of human and cave lion is the oldest known figurative sculpture combining two species, and it was found in pieces in a Swabian cave in 1939 before being painstakingly reconstructed. It now sits in Museum Ulm and represents the earliest evidence of symbolic thinking found anywhere on earth.

• 05

  Federal Fortress Ulm (Wilhelmsburg)

  Built between 1842 and 1859 to defend southern Germany after the Napoleonic Wars, this limestone citadel contains 570 rooms and a moat 20 metres deep, yet advances in artillery had already begun to render it obsolete before construction was even finished. Today the Wilhelmsburg functions as a cultural venue within one of Europe's most extensive 19th-century fortress rings.

• 06

  Crooked House

  Built in 1406 on the edge of the Blau River, this half-timbered house tilts between 9 and 10 degrees because its southern foundations rest on weaker ground, a differential settlement that has been worsening for over six centuries. Guinness World Records lists it as the most crooked hotel in the world, and guests sleep in beds levelled to compensate for the slant.

• 07

  Library Hall Wiblingen

  Completed between 1740 and 1750 inside Kloster Wiblingen, this Rococo hall once housed 15,000 volumes, but after the monastery's secularisation in 1806 the books were carted away and the hall was repurposed as a field hospital. The painted ceiling by Franz Martin Kuen and the polychrome sculptures survive intact, drawing around 90,000 visitors a year.

• 08

  22 more places to discover

  In the Parroo app