Zum Sternla

Zum Sternla has been serving food and beer on Lange Straße since 1380 — six hundred and forty-five years and counting — a fact the current owner, Martin Schaller, confirms with the Bamberg city archive rather than a marketing brochure. It is the oldest continuously operating guesthouse in Germany and, according to some readings, in Europe.

The kitchen is honest Franconian: bratwurst from a butcher two streets away, schäufele (pork shoulder) with the region's famous Kloß potato dumpling, Aischgrunder carp in winter, a daily changing mittagsmenü for €12 that half of Bamberg's university students count as lunch. The beer comes from Mahrs Bräu two kilometres south; the Silvaner is from a Franconian cooperative Schaller has bought from for thirty years.

Two rooms: a front bar with six high tables and the original 1600s wooden ceiling; a back dining room with long farm tables, whitewashed walls and a tiled stove in the corner. Open every day from 10:00 until late. No reservations, usually a table within fifteen minutes even at peak times. It is Bamberg's most democratic room.

For Solo Dining: Zum Sternla has bar-stool seating at the front, a bottomless reading-friendly beer list (Silvaner or the local Helles), and the kind of century-worn atmosphere that rewards sitting with a notebook or a paperback. The kitchen is fast; the bill lands under €25. Most afternoons a student is at the next bar stool grading essays.