Kelheim

Kelheim stands at the meeting of the Altmühl and the Danube, below a promontory once enclosed by the ramparts of a great Celtic settlement. In the Middle Ages the town grew under the Wittelsbach dukes of Bavaria. Duke Ludwig I reshaped its streets and strengthened its walls, but in 1231 he was stabbed to death by an unknown attacker at the town gate.

River traffic, crafts and agriculture sustained the town, whose citizens also earned a living from fishing and viticulture. War reached Kelheim in the eighteenth century, when Austrian troops occupied it. In 1705 a rising led by the master butcher Matthias Kraus drove the occupiers out briefly; they returned, suppressed the revolt and put its leader to death. Nearby, the Asam brothers fashioned the Baroque church of Weltenburg Abbey beside the Danube.