The Alte Brücke

Built seven hundred years earlier, the Alte Brücke had funneled the Main's trade into Würzburg, and the Marienberg fortress on the hill above it had made certain the funneling stayed profitable for whoever held the hill.

Barges and towpaths worked both banks, wine casks and beer casks and sacks of grain moving in the unhurried, continuous way of a trade that had outlasted every army that had ever marched across this particular bridge.