Today on Monday Mysteries we take a look at a walkway where walking is prohibited: it’s the newly installed sidewalk beneath the old city walls on Mühlstrasse in Tübingen.

Mühlstrasse is the street that runs across the “postcard shot bridge” and for a short ways runs next to the old part of Tübingen. For a long time the old city wall that runs along the west side of Mühlstrasse was covered up while they did repair and reconstruction work on that part of town. This meant that if you wanted to walk down Mühlstrasse, you needed to walk along the other side of the street, as the west side was closed off, and the wall was covered up.

But then recently they finished all the work in that area, and so the wall was uncovered.  Here’s a look at Mühlstrasse with the newly revealed wall on the righthand side of the street; this area includes a brand new path along the wall, stretching from Neue Strasse all the way to Neckar Gasse:

Mühlstrasse, looking from Neue Strasse toward Neckar Gasse

The next photo shows a view looking the other way down Mühlstrasse from the Neckar Gasse end, with the wall and the new path on the left side of the photo:

View of Mühlstrasse looking from Neckar Gasse toward Neue Strasse

Do you spot what’s curious about this photo? That sign with the red circle on the left indicates that you can’t walk along the walkway.  I.e.,  it’s a sidewalk where walking is forbidden. There’s a sign, but no fence. However, when you approach it from the Neue Strasse end, there is a metal fence that blocks access to the path, but no sign that says it is blocked off:

Mühlstrasse, looking from Neue Strasse toward Neckar Gasse

I’d actually thought before that the metal fencing was there because there was no curb along the sidewalk where the metal fence is. But now it’s clearer that the fencing is supposed to prevent you from getting onto the new part of the sidewalk that runs along the wall.

Of course, if you can’t walk beyond the fencing, then you can’t get to the historic plaque that’s just beyond the metal fence on the side of the wall:

Plaque on the wall is on the right, just beyond metal fence

Odd, no? Chris commented that as a sidewalk the new one would probably only be big enough for people to walk along single file, so perhaps that’s why they don’t want you walking along there.

It’s not a bike path, either, which might have been handy to have on that side, but of course with the fence it is impractical for a bike to use.

Now the other side of the street has a super-wide sidewalk, with separate parts of the sidewalk designated for pedestrians and bikes. Interestingly, even though the car lanes aren’t that wide, bikes don’t always use the bike path on that side,  preferring to use the street instead (as you can see in the photo above on the left).

Anyway, I’m not quite sure why they bothered to put in a paved walkway below the wall if you can’t walk on it, and I don’t understand having an historic marker that no one can get to.

It’s a puzzling bit of town planning – and it provides today’s Monday Mystery.