31. The town in the valley

The town in the valley

On the way to Wimpfen im Tal we pass the former salt works Ludwigshall, which line the foot of the Old Hill. The town in the valley, which we are now entering, rests partly on the foundation of a Roman fort, whose size was 170 x 200 metres. The town wall in the south is on the original fort wall. The wall of “Vicus Wimpfen”, which was discovered in excavations, forms a kind of hexagon, measuring 760 metres at the widest by 330 metres at the narrowist, and of which Burkhardt von Hall tells us, that it was the most massive in this region, and was said to have been called Cornelia.

The remains of the town wall as we see them today are of medieval origin, at least as far as they are visible above the earth. The old weir is only just visible in a few places, especially on the town wall. The path, leading along the Neckar, is laid on washed up ground. A Gothic gate on the Neckar side, of which a pointed arch with the “Key of Peter” juts out of the earth, was the former entrance to the monastery from the Neckar. However, the main attraction of the town in the valley is the chapter church.