Ask a Heidelberg resident about the Alte Brücke, and you may hear that it isn't all that old. They have a point. Eight wooden bridges stood here before this one, and floods kept taking them. After the flood of 1784, the town finally rebuilt the bridge in stone.

Stone wasn't the end of the trouble. Heidelberg escaped Allied bombing, but not its own army: German troops blew up the bridge as they left in March 1945, a day before US forces arrived. It was rebuilt, and the flood marks on its pilings still tell the earlier story.

Two of VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours of Heidelberg cross it. One points out the bronze monkey at its far end, whose mirror is said to bring wealth.