NUREMBERG - GETTING AROUND
The old town is best explored on foot. Walking along Konigstrasse and its extensions into the marketplace and Rathaus square, essentially, across the length of the old town from the Hauptbahnhof the Kaiserburg (the city`s medieval castle) will take you only about 30 minutes and will lead you through the city`s medieval core and past most of its historic monuments.
By Public Transportation
There are three U-bahn or underground lines U1, U2 and U3;
five Straßenbahn or tram lines 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; and four S-bahn or suburban train
lines S1, S2, S3 and S4, with the S-Bahn lines all reaching beyond the city
limits. They all radiate out from the main railway station. You won`t need to
use them within the compact old city, but they`re useful for reaching the
airport (U2), the Museum of Industrial Culture (Tram 8), the Nazi party rally
grounds (S2 or trams 6 or 8), and some of the outlying hotels, as well as
nearby towns such as Bamberg (S1). All public transportation are within the
integrated VGN. A standard Zone A adult ticket is about €1.80, a day pass costs
about €5.40. Passes bought on Saturday are valid all weekend.
U1 links Nuremberg and Fürth, U2 links Röthenbach and the
airport and U3 shares its core route with U2 but branches towards Nordwestring
in the North and Gustav Adolf Straße in the South forming an overall U-Shape
with both endpoints west of the city center.
For a taxi, call the taxi
office tel. +49 (0)911 19410. For city-taxi tel.
+49 (0)911 272770. The base fare and first kilometer cost is
about €2.70 each, while each additional kilometer adds on about €1.35.
Taxi Stands: Bahnhofsvorplatz, Hallplatz, Lorenzerplatz,
Jakobsplatz, Hauptmarkt
We do not
recommend having a car while exploring the Nuremberg. Parking is scarce, there
is a lot of traffic congestion and public transportation is almost always
quicker. Also, the old town is not designed for driving, it`s criss-crossed by
pedestrian malls and medieval cobblestones, and the public roads are twisted
into Schleifenlösung – loops. Whichever way you drive in the old town, the
road will loop around and bring you back out, even buses, emergency vehicles
and drivers with accessibility permits cannot get through.
If you do have a car, parking
options include:
-For a day trip, use Park and
Ride. These facilities are signposted from the main approach roads.
-For full day or overnight
stays, there are 19 parking garages, with 5500 spaces.
-Street parking is very short
supply (most spaces are resident-only, even out in the suburbs) and costs about
€2 an hour.
Check options on
www.parkhaus-nuernberg.de, which shows locations, prices and real-time
availability. There are also indicator signs on streets.
Nuremberg has ample bike lanes along busy roads and the
Altstadt (old town) is pretty bike friendly. There are several long-distance
cycle routes which pass through Nuremberg, making use of the Pegnitz river bank and
the Main-Danube canal to avoid traffic. These reach Bamberg to the north and
Regensburg to the south.
Nuremberg is part of the Nextbike
bike-share scheme, which operates worldwide, and is run here by Norisbike. First you need to register and set up
an account with them, effectively free if you do so online. Then decide on
either occasional or regular use. Occasional users pay about €1 for every 30
minutes bike use, up to a daily maximum of around €9. For regular use you can
pay about €48 per year, then your first 30 min each day comes free, thereafter
you pay the same as the occasional users. So this pricing model favors frequent
brief use such as a daily commute. The website shows how and where to pick up
and return bikes, with real-time availability, and dozens of locations around
the city including the main railway station. Your regular user status will be
valid for every nextbike operator throughout Germany.