A City Walk for Everyone in Alzey
The city walk takes you through Alzey town centre, past 12 points of interest. These include, for example, the Rossmarkt and the fish market. Eight stops are fully accessible to wheelchair users. At each point of interest, there is an information board with a QR code. This takes you to an audio version of the text.
Places of interest
1 Alzey Museum/Tourist Information
What is now the Alzey Museum was built in the 16th century as a hospital. The stair tower at the side and the
window jambs. After being destroyed during the War of the Palatinate Succession in 1689, the hospital was rebuilt in 1747–48 in the Baroque style with a spacious mansard roof.
The museum is open all year round.
Mon – Fri 10.00 – 12.30 and 13.30 – 16.30
Sat, Sun, public holidays 10.00 – 12.00 and 14.00 – 16.30.
Free admission!
2 City Wall, Pigeon Tower and Georg Scheu Monument
Set within one of the restored sections of the old city wall stands the Taubenturm, which has also been restored.
In front of the city wall stands the monument to the
eminent Alzey vine breeder Georg Scheu
(1879–1949). Scheu’s cross-breeding experiments
came the well-known grape varieties Scheurebe,
Huxelrebe, Faberrebe and Siegerrebe, as well as Kanzler,
Würzer, Regner and Septimer.
3 Small Church (built 1728/1729)
The simple, Baroque hall church, with its encircling galleries and the pulpit dominating the front of the room, corresponds entirely, in its sober functionalism, to the
principles of Protestant church architecture.
Among the church’s notable features is an organ dating from 1737, built by the renowned Hunsrück organ-building family, the Stumms.
4 Municipal Winery
Around 1850, the estate was built in the late Classical style. Modelled on aristocratic palaces, the complex of buildings is arranged around a courtyard of honour, which is enclosed by a grille facing the street. The estate, bequeathed to the town in 1916, is now operated as the Alzey Municipal Winery.
Tip: Art exhibitions are held regularly in the Burggrafiat opposite.
5 Alzey Castle
The complex, believed to have been built in the 13th century, was the cradle of the Rhenish Countship of the Palatinate, a secondary residence and the seat of the district administration.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, the castle was expanded into a stately palace complex, though it was severely damaged during the War of the Palatinate Succession.
In the wake of the 19th-century wave of Romanesque-inspired castle restoration, the ruins were rebuilt at the beginning of the 20th century.
Today, the palace houses the district court and a boarding school.
6 Roman Fort
In the 1st century AD, a Roman vicus developed from a preceding Celtic settlement – a small-town centre with trade and commerce, a spa with healing springs and an associated sacred precinct. In 352, the Alemanni destroyed the settlement.
A fort was built on part of the site between 368 and 370. The imposing defensive structure lasted only a few decades. Roman rule along the Rhine came to an end in the mid-5th century. This was followed by the Frankish period, beginning with the reign of the Merovingians.
7 Obermarkt with St Nicholas’ Church
The large open space of the Obermarkt, which had become the town’s market square since the 19th century (where livestock and fruit markets, as well as annual fairs and the wine festival, were held), was part of a Frankish, and later the
Palatinate court.
The square is bordered to the south by the late-medieval
St Nicholas’ Church, which was built in several phases during the 15th century and completed in 1499 with the finishing of the church tower.
8 Hexenbleiche
Hexenbleiche is a picturesque spot featuring the remains of the medieval city wall and the still-standing Metzgerturm, which is probably the oldest tower of the city’s fortifications.
It is popularly known as the ‘Hexenturm’ (Witches’ Tower), a reference to which the Mainz
artist Karlheinz Oswald alludes to in his bronze sculpture ‘The Little Witch’.
9 Atzel
Atzel is a narrow alleyway with typical 18th- and 19th-century lower-middle-class old town buildings. The house at Atzel 3 dates back to the 17th century and is one of the few houses from the period before the War of the Palatinate Succession.
10 Spießgasse
The street still boasts a large number of houses of architectural and art-historical
value, particularly from the 18th and 19th centuries. The
oldest house on the street is a plastered building erected in 1570
, which was fitted with a curved Baroque gable in 1669.
11 Fish Market with the ‘Old Town Hall’
Until the end of the 18th century, fresh fish from the Rhine was also sold on this square. Architecturally, the square is dominated by the
town’s former town hall, with its striking polygonal stair tower.
Today, this houses a carillon featuring a figure of the minstrel Volker von Alzey (performance times: 10.00, 12.05, 14.00, 16.00, 18.00, 20.00).
The Renaissance building itself was erected in 1586 using stones from the demolished Weidas Monastery.
12 Rossmarkt
The square’s name derives from a horse market that used to be held here in earlier times. The square is characterised, on the one hand, by the Rossmarkt fountain (designed by the Neustadt artist Gernot Rumpf) and, on the other, by the two ornate half-timbered houses from the 17th and early 18th centuries, which stand on either side of the
the square.
