Where three rivers divide a Baroque city into three peninsulas — the Danube, Inn, and Ilz converge at the Dreiflüsseeck below a clifftop fortress, the Bishop's Cathedral houses the world's largest cathedral organ, and the entire city was rebuilt in the Italian Baroque style after a catastrophic fire destroyed the medieval town in 1662
Passau (55,000) sits at the convergence of three rivers — the Danube (Donau), the Inn, and the Ilz — at the German-Austrian border. The Dreiflüsseeck (Three Rivers Corner) where all three waters meet is visibly tricoloured in high water: the pale green-grey Danube, the darker green Inn (which carries more water than the Danube at the confluence), and the dark peat-stained Ilz. The city was rebuilt in the Italian Baroque style after a fire in 1662 destroyed most of the medieval town; the result is the most Italianate Baroque streetscape in Germany. St. Stephen's Cathedral (Dom St. Stephan, reb…
Passau occupies one of the most strategically significant river confluences in central Europe — a Roman fort (Castra Batava, 2nd century CE) was established on the old-town peninsula where the Danube and Inn meet, and the city later developed as the seat of one of the largest bishoprics in the Holy Roman Empire. The Prince-Bishops of Passau ruled over a diocese stretching from the Alps to Vienna and from Bohemia to the Danube, until secularisation in 1803 transferred their temporal power to Bavaria. The fire of 1662 destroyed most of the medieval city; reconstruction under Bishop Wenzel von T…