Augsburg Tour Recommendations

By googling "augsburg germany private guide," I find 2 tour companies who do Augsburg tours -- Bodo's Bavarian Tours and John's Bavarian Tours.

The above search also turned up the Augsburg tourism website, which has an e-mail address to which one can write to inquire about guided tours.

Viator has a listing for a 2-hour private tour -- google "Viator Augsburg".

Augsburg is pretty easy. I don't know why you'd need a tour. Walk straight up the Bahnhoff Strasse and keep going straight and you'll be right in the middle of the old town in 5-10 minutes. If you bear left at Maximillianstrasse you'll walk right past the old town hall and up to the main church (Dom).

My only question is whether you will be up for an afternoon of touring after a morning at Dachau -- I was barely able to talk, just wanted to sit quietly. But you and your friends are the ones who know how you react.

Just because a town or city is easy to walk around in, you learn nothing about the town by doing this. Many towns have amazing history, but you won't know this just from strolling down the street or peeking into a church. Walking tours are pretty much always well worth doing. I go on one every where I go, including in the US.

Augsburg doesn't seem to have a lot of English tours other than what is on offer from the TI. You might want to look at Tours by Locals too.
Viator is just selling someone elses tour. If you check on Trip Advisor, you will be able to tell which ones. Book with the tour company itself and save the tour operator from having to hand over a 25% commission to Viator.

Here you will find a map of Augsburg town and sights in English:
https://www.augsburg-tourismus.de/files/augsburgtourismus/media/infomaterial/pdf/regio_sehenswuerdigkeiten_2015_en.pdf

They have also an official tour in English (daily at 2 pm, EUR 10 p.p.):
https://www.augsburg-tourismus.de/fuehrungen/oeffentliche-fuehrungen/stadtfuehrung

Contact data: https://www.augsburg-tourismus.de/international

I lived in Augsburg for four years. It is a beautiful city and the key sights are the town square with the totally reconstructed Rathhaus (city hall) dating back to 1600s. The walls are the originals, but the interior was destroyed in WWII.

Also, the Fuggeri is worth a visit. It is walking distance from the town square. It dates back to the 1600s when Joseph Fugger, then the richest man in the World created a mini town for the poor to reside. You might call it 1600s public housing. People still live there and pay a nominal annual fee.

Buy a guidebook of Germany and it will probably have more information on Augsburg. I suggest taking the train from Munich, it is a short train ride. You can walk from the train station to the town square.

Another interesting place is out of town and you would need a guide. During WWII there was a ME-109 aircraft factory near Augsburg that was bombed by the allies. There are still bomb craters in the area, I believe west of the city.

A 75 euro tour sounds expensive, but I have never been fond of a segway tour. However, if you have limitations on walking, it might be worth the tour.

Thanks everyone for the information on Augsburg. Much appreciated!

The tour of the tourist info mentioned above focuses on the Fugger family and is afaik in German AND English, so probably a lot of German and little English. I don't want to discourage you from taking that tour, but like others I think that you can do a self guided tour with a little reading in advance. Given your historical interests I'd focus on four main points:

1. Roman Augsburg: Augsburg is a Roman foundation (and was already an important European city, when Munich was still a miserable hamlet in the Freising parish Feldmoching). There are no architectural traces of that epoch but the Roman Museum gives a good idea of the era and it is compact enough to prevent getting tired (Https://www.augsburg.de/kultur/museen-galerien/roemisches-museum/).

2. The Free Imperial City: A. was a sovereign city state of the Holy Roman Empire with corresponding representation needs. The best expression for that is the splendid Town Hall by Elias Holl, considered by art historians as one of the best Renaissance buildings of Europe. Don't miss the Golden Hall (tickets at the Tourist Information in the Rathaus ground floor right; then cross the hall and take the lift: https://www.augsburg.de/kultur/sehenswuerdigkeiten/rathaus/).

3. Luther and the Reformation: Augsburg plays an important role in the history of the Reformation: Luther laid here at the diet of 1518 the main features of his theology, and at the Reichstag of 1530 the Confessio Augustana, the official confession of Lutheranism, was submitted. After a long time of confessional conflicts in the city there was made the Augsburg religious peace (Augsburger Religionsfrieden) in 1555, as a result of which the city is today confessionally divided. That led both to the concept of the double church - a catholic and a lutheran one side by side (for example, lutheran Holy Cross and catholic Holy Cross) - and to the concept of churches with mixed denomination, e.g. St. Anna, where the western part of the nave is Catholic and houses the private chapel of the Fugger family, whereas the eastern part is lutheran. Besides St. Anna, I'd visit St. Ulrich and Afra, where also the contrast in the understanding of art of the two denominations becomes clear: Catholic St. Afra is a pompous building on the boundary between Renaissance and Baroque, whereas the Protestant church is simple and strict. (https://www.augsburg-tourismus.de/martin-luther-in-augsburg , download the brochure).

4. Music: Augsburg was the original home of the Mozart familiy before Leopold Mozart moved to Salzburg. The Mozarthaus is now a museum (https://www.augsburg.de/kultur/museen-galerien/mozarthaus/)
   Incidentally, Augsburg was also an important center of musical instrument making. From here came the piano maker Nanette Streicher, née Stein, who after her marriage with Andreas Streich (the friend of Schiller, who assisted him in escaping from Stuttgart and handed over to him all his savings) moved to Vienna and became the main supplier to Beethoven.

5. Social History: The "Fuggerei", donated by Jakob Fugger to provide housing for poor people, is the world's oldest social housing complex still in use. Poor people still can live there for a nominal annual rent of € 0.88 (= 1 Rhenanian Guilder in Jakobs live time). The settlement was damaged by the Royal Airforce in February in 1944, but already on March 1, 1944, the Fugger Family Senate decided to rebuild it as soon as circumstances would allow it. And so they did in fall 1945 (https://www.fugger.de/en/fuggerei.html).

Enjoy your visit. If you have special questions, feel free to send me a PM.

BTW, the Augsburg train station is a huge reconstruction site presently - no escalators, no elevators. If you have people with mobility issues in your company, you might want to contact the mobility service of the deutsche Bahn the day before (0180 6 512 512).

The train station's been going thru "construction" for a couple years. It's going to be impressive when done.

I tend to read about places and mark what I want to see, which is why I rarely pay for tours. I should have mentioned that in my previous post.

Good advice in this thread. Enjoy the town.

The train station's been going thru "construction" for a couple years. It's going to be impressive when done.

That's true - the city and the DB fought endlessly about what really should happen. But a year ago it really started and now at least the whole station is broken.