Where to stay in Bavaria

would like to tour some old villages

Here are some very nice, small, attractive old-world towns in southern Germany, not necessarily village-sized, not necessarily on the Romantic Road, and not necessarily in Bavaria. No sense in imposing those artificial constraints on your trip!

Not far from Rothenburg:

Iphofen (scroll thru photos)
Marktbreit
Ochsenfurt
Sommerhausen
Bad Windsheim

Between Rothenburg and Augsburg:

Dinkelsbühl (RR Town)
Noerdlingen (RR Town)
Pappenheim
Weißenburg

To the west of Rothenburg... you'll find many of the towns listed here on a different theme route called the German Half-Timbered House Road (Fachwerkstrasse.) Click here for route map.

Miltenberg
Michelstadt
Bad Wimpfen
Besigheim
Schwäbisch Hall
Esslingen

Black Forest, to the SW of Stuttgart:

Gengenbach
Schiltach
Gutach
Villingen

The "Romantic Road" is an invention of the tourism industry, btw. It's not as though all the best old towns in Germany lined up neatly on a north-south axis for convenient touring... some are great, some average. Towns pay dues to belong to the organization, which strongly promotes the RR internationally. That's why you know about the RR but not these other places. The heavy promotion results in crowding during months of heavy tourism.

Other towns like the ones I've listed exist elsewhere in the south and all around Germany, for that matter. Most people visit Rothenburg and maybe the Romantic Road towns in 1-2 days, then spend the rest of their time in big-post-war-constructed cities visiting museums full of old stuff that wasn't destroyed in WW I or WW II. I like museums too, but there are so many nice and mostly well-preserved towns around the country that it's a shame to ignore them, I think. A trip with the focus you've chosen should be very rewarding.

With one exception, when I had to use a bus, my visits to all these towns were accomplished by train. I can normally target 2-3 small towns per day if they're fairly close to each other and to where I'm staying; a typical day might involve a train ride of 20-60 minutes, 2-3 hours of sightseeing, then repeat. Because the regional train system offers very frequent service, because the train stations are close to the town center, because day passes are typically very cheap (or free, as they are in the Black Forest) and because smaller towns make for easy walking, the train is always a no-brainer for this kind of travel, IME.

Look at Bad Tolz. It is between Munich and Salzburg

Rothenburg like is rather north of Munich and lots of villages have been mentioned already which I like more than Rothenburg.

South of Munich you find completely different, more Alpine style, villages like Mittenwald, Prien am Chiemsee, Tegernsee, Nussdorf, Wallgau or Lenggries.

Always nice is Wasserburg am Inn.

We stayed in Mittenwald and loved it.

Aha, the topic has shifted from "touring" old villages to locating one old village for driving convenience. Oh well. As Mignon points out, there is little similarity between towns like Rothenburg or Noerdlingen to the north and towns of similar size to the south of Munich.