The Romantic Road is a "theme route" devised by promotion-minded travel agents in the 1950s. It describes the 460 km of surface roads between Würzburg and Füssen in southern Germany, specifically in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, linking a number of picturesque towns and castles. In medieval times, part of it was a trade route that connected the center of Germany with the south. Today, this region is thought by many international travellers to possess "quintessentially German" scenery and culture, in towns and cities such as Nördlingen, Dinkelsbühl and Rothenburg ob der Tauber and in castles such as Burg Harburg and the famous Neuschwanstein. With about five million overnight stays, four to five times that number of day visits and around 15,000 tourist jobs generated by the route, it is an economically important southern German travel destination.

Along the route

from north to south: