Last Updated: May 2026
Wertheim is one of those river cruise stops that catches you completely off guard — a small, immaculately preserved medieval town where the Tauber River flows into the Main, with half-timbered houses leaning over cobblestone streets, castle ruins on the hill, and a bakery that has been making pretzels since 1551. We arrived from Heidelberg aboard the River Duchess, sailing upriver to join the Main River and dock at Wertheim in Baden-Württemberg. Sandy and I spent an afternoon exploring, and Wertheim immediately became one of the most genuinely authentic stops of the entire cruise — the kind of place that feels entirely undiscovered, even though it has been here, largely unchanged, for 800 years.
