We end our day in Darmstadt, before meeting friends, with a visit to the Mathildenhöhe the most famous sight in Darmstadt and also an Unesco World Heritage Site. For that we have to climb from the downtown area up to the historic artists’ colony and we have to find the right route. We know we found the right route when we notice signs pointing up so up we go as fast as we can as we don’t have a lot of time before having to meet our friends.
Interesting the trail takes us via the former city and prison wall. While we understand the city wall part we are not sure how the prison was located, maybe it was abutting the wall?
Until we get close to the top the views are not that exciting with many apartment buildings but soon we catch the first glimpse of the iconic Wedding Tower which gives us more energy and we push on through the heat to arrive to the top.
Here the area is different, most buildings are architecturally interesting and we start walking through a park which provides us some welcome shade.
On top is the famous Mathildenhöhe complex with the Wedding Tower, the Orthodox church and the Exhibition building being the more famous ones.
We explore each of the major attractions from outside, there is no time to go inside, maybe we will do that some other time. We enter only one store but with no AC it is unbearable hot inside so we decide to return to the parking and go to meet our friends.
The descent is much easier than the ascent and the neighborhood is also more scenic and soon we are at our parking and it is time to leave if the parking machine lets us, and it does after some prodding.
The meeting with our friends goes well and then we explore a few more old haunts before returning to the hotel to pack as tomorrow it is time to leave back to the US.
