According to legend, a merchant from Swabia once arrived in Freiburg with barrels of gold, intending to buy the city. The townspeople laughed. They laughed harder when they learnt his wife had secretly swapped the gold for sand and stones.

The story probably grew from a 1600s painting of a merchant on the inner side of the Schwabentor (Swabian Gate). The gate dates from about 1250 and stood around 26 metres tall until it was raised to about 50 metres in 1901. Trams still run through the tower. Only three towers in Germany can say that, and Freiburg has two.

VoiceMap’s Old Town Freiburg tour stops here to tell the legend, show how that painted merchant hints at the gate’s original height, and point out the walkway up to the castle hill.