Things to see while staying in Rothenburg ob der Tauber for 6 nights

Nuremberg makes a nice day trip. You could also go farther to Bamberg.
Wurzburg
Russ recommends several other small towns between R’burg and the Main. I plan on checking out a couple this summer.
I went to Ansbach one year and enjoyed it.
Eichstatt looks interestng, but I think it takes too long by train.
I am planning on visiting Gunzenhausen this year.

Do you have a place to stay? I stay in this apartment - www.froehlich-rothenburg.de

Thanks for that info! We are looking at some places to stay, and I’ll give your recommendation a look. We had our eye on Gerberhaus (?) I believe it’s called. It’s our first visit to Germany so we would love to do a much as we can but without too much rushing here and there. Wasn’t sure if Rothenburg was an area we would need to stay for 6-7 nights. Sounds like there’s quite a bit to do though. I appreciate your help!

We stayed at the Gerberhaus twice, both times on RS tours. It's in a great location, and has a lovely walled garden. My notes say the hotel was very nice, with a good breakfast. On the second trip, I have the breakfast as "Excellent, with lots of fruit and cheese."

In addition to train connections, there are also buses going through Rothenburg odT.

There are bus connections to Dinkelsbühl, to which you cannot get by train.

You can get to Nördlingen, my favorite Romantic Road town via Dinkelsbühl. In fact, the bus connection from Rothenburg to Nördlingen has a 1H28 change in Dinkelsbühl, so you could see both towns in a day. From Nördlingen back to Rothenburg, you could backtrack by bus or us the trains through Donauwörth.

From Rothenburg you can get to the Romantic Road towns of Weikersheim and Bad Mergentheim by bus. You can also go by train via Würzburg, but that's a roundabout way and takes longer.

There is also a direct bus from Rothenburg to Creglingen, home of the Fingerhut (thimble) museum). Oh, Creglingen is also notable for an elaborate Tilman Riemenschneider altar piece (there is also one at the back of the big church in Rothenburg).

You can find all train and bus connections through Rothenburg using the Bahn's query page. That will show you an entire route, with connections, but you have to know your ultimate destination.

You can also use the Bahnhof Tafel (station arrival and departure board) to find all connections in and out of Rothenburg. Note, you can change the date and time in the appropriate fields. The board will show arrivals or departures for a one hour period. You can move to the next or previous hour by pressing later or earlier.

Since the Bahnhof Tafel page for Rothenburg only shows train connections to Steinach, you might want to change the station to Steinach (b. Rothenburg odT) to see connections beyond Steinach.

If you want to see where just buses go, uncheck everything to the left of and including the green 'S' (for S-Bahn).

Super helpful advice!

We are actually now talking about adding a couple nights in Munich so we can buzz over to Salzburg for a day before we leave. I’m excited to be planning this and grateful for all this great info. Keep it coming!

Ochsenfurt and Marktbreit are two scenic wine villages easily (1 connection) reached from Rothenburg. Marktbreit is a bit more scenic and Ochsenfurt has more lunch choices for planning purposes.

Both of these villages are on the train route to Würzburg, which has a castle, a residenz and a pilgrimage church to see. Würzburg is one of our favorite towns. It is worth a full day and more.

You might walk down to Detwang, a scenic village on the Tauber River. The Peter and Paul Church there has a beautiful Riemenschneider carved altar. It is only open certain hours, so check with the tourist office in Rothenburg before you go. The walk is almost as interesting for us as the church. There are several walks outside the walls and into the Tauber Valley that make Rothenburg a great stop for us.

Also handy from Rothenburg by train is Bad Windsheim with its outdoors museum of farms from the Franken region.

The small towns and villages are not major tourist destinations. It is easier to learn about them with a google search.

I can't see staying in Rothenberg for six nights, for day trip.

Consider taking the Romantic Road, it includes medieval towns like Rothenberg
https://www.romanticroadgermany.com

The first visitors were friends and families of the American soldiers stationed in the large bases in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg but the idea of the trail from Würzburg to Füssen soon became wildly popular.

It's not too hard to see the reason for the popularity - despite the modern roots of the idea, the tour combines the historic cities of Würzburg and Augsburg with the three medieval walled towns of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Dinkelsbühl and Nördlingen, and then finishes off with the tourist highlights of Neuschwanstein Castle and the Alps.

These days coach parties from all over the world can be seen at the most popular stops along the way, the route signs along the way are in German and Japanese, and in 2010 the Romantic Road celebrated its 60th birthday.

That’s a looong time to spend in Rothenburg. I think 3 nights would be my absolute limit and it isn’t particularly convenient for basing. The connections are fine, but the city isn’t laid out for easy access to the bahnhof. It’s a beautiful city, but I dunno, I’d split my time and I generally hate to skip around

Staying in Munich a couple of extra days so you can zip down to Salzburg seems self defeating to me. If you want to see Salzburg (and it is a wonderful city in my opinion), stay a night or two in Salzburg and properly explore it. Have a nice visit to Augustiner Brewery beer garden a short walk or even shorter bus ride from the centre and enjoy food and drink under the sweet chestnut trees. Enjoy the funicular up to the fortress and walk across the mountain to the elevator. Visit Mozart's birthplace and the house he lived in. The church is wonderful, the cemetery behind also, as is the church bakery on its original site. And the gardens. All this without even mentioning The Sound of Music, or the jetboat on the river, or the horse drawn carriage tours or the tricksy water features or the horse fountain or the food, yes the food, or the old town or the Red Bull museum or .... or .....

Don't try to do it in day trips.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber is walkable in a half or whole day (depend on how much Christmas ornament shopping you do) and the excursions mentioned above are doable and enjoyable but as this is your first Germany (first Europe too??) you should know that RodT is at the end of a very small train branch line and not especially easy to make all those connections by train. The buses mentioned are also good but infrequent. Maybe you don't want a 90 minute layover both ways? (look out for the nesting Storks up above and with a nest cam below). 90 minutes might be just too long and also just too short at the same time. I think that for exploring around the RodT vicinity a car makes it easier.

6 days in RodT is a long time.

We've stayed in Rothenburg probably a dozen times over 20 years..its easily worth 2 or 3 nights, you'll struggle to fill 6 nights though especially if you don't have car to get you out to the surrounding areas. You'll lose significant amounts of time waiting on buses and trains without a car-

Any recommendations for train trips to interesting surrounding areas?

I can see why Rothenburg looks good as a base. Rothenburg surely has some nice buildings and an enjoyable town wall, and it seems to be Rick's favorite place in the world. But along with the nice atmosphere those features create, there's also a "theme park" vibe that you might find annoying after a while. I did - and for me, the Nightwatchman tour, while entertaining in a Disneyesque way, added to that impression. Rick's article on Rothenburg dubs R'burg "the King of medieval cuteness" and even labels it a "theme park" in the making, then invites you to work around that issue, offering advice on avoiding R'burg's over-touristed streets during daylight hours. He calls R'burg Germany's "best-preserved walled town," but I'm not so sure about that, as post-WW II photos, like this one with 40% of Rothenburg in rubble, serve as a heads up that what you see today wasn't necessarily there even 75 years ago.

All that said, I'm glad that I saw Rothenburg. But IMHO it's the wrong place for 6 nights so that you can do train outings. The big problem is, the day trips available to you from R'burg will eat up a lot of time. R'burg is at the very end of a trunk railway that does not serve the other Romantic Road towns directly, which is why you are hearing about bus connections. Weikersheim Palace - very close to R'burg as the crow flies - is nice to visit. I took a day trip there once from a Würzburg base - a train trip of 1 hour.

But from a Rothenburg base, the regularly-scheduled public transport to Weikersheim is horrible. April, right? I looked at morning journeys for Thur. April 14.

at 6:58: 2 hrs. 39 min. one way on 4 separate trains
at 8:29: 2 hrs. 50 min. one way on 1 bus + 2 trains
at 9:05: 2 hrs. 32 min. one way on 4 separate trains
at 11:05: 2 hrs. 32 min. one way on 4 separate trains

(Note that MUNICH could be a daytrip from Rothenburg, with travel times like that!!)

Dinkelsbühl is a little better - more frequent departures, travel times between 1 hr. 40 min. and 2 hrs. one way on 2 separate buses.

The medieval town of Bamberg (with UNESCO World Heritage site status!) is a great place where a full day could be enjoyed, but from a Rothenburg travel base, keep in mind that getting there will require from 2.25 to 3 hours one way on 3-4 separate trains.

I would encourage you to consider Würzburg (W'burg > Rothenburg takes just 1 hr., btw) or Nuremberg as your travel base instead. You'll have a greater number of more-doable day trip choices, better ones, probably, without all the wheel spinning. Despite its large population, the old-world atmosphere in Nuremberg's old town is quite nice:

https://conference.vde.com/cips/2012/PublishingImages/Venue/Nuremberg_l.jpg
https://cdn.getyourguide.com/img/tour_img-263194-145.jpg
http://www.europeanbeerguide.net/nurnpubs.htm

Agree that's too much time to spend there. When we went in 2018, we stayed at the Hotel Klosterstuble and loved it: https://klosterstueble.de/

Thank you everyone for all the great advice! We’ve decided to stay in Salzburg and Munich instead and do a full day trip up to Rothenburg. No one made us feel like we shouldn’t stay, we just realize we would probably be more interested in just spending a day in that region. This is why I posed the question here. I love all the helpful responses!

I’d respectfully suggest doing an overnight instead of just a day trip. It’s a 3-hour trip one way and honestly, the best part of Rothenburg is when the crowds leave at night.

Do what you want but it’s worth spending a night if you ask me

I agree with cjbinroch just above

Rothenburg is a splendid place but an awfully long day trip from Munich. If your budget agrees, take a toothbrush and stay overnight. Depending on how early you leave the following day, you can visit Ansbach or Nuremberg on the way back.

I agree with those who say you should stay overnight at least 1 night in Rothenburg. It is most charming after all the day-trippers from the big buses have left. It is peaceful early morning and in the evening. Personally I love Rothenburg and have been there 8-10 times. Rothenburg is not a convenient location for train travel. It is burdensome, so plan to stay a couple of nights.