Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Bavaria · Travel Poster

Each poster comes with a letter home. Ella writes about the place, its hidden history, and the detail that never makes it into the guidebooks.

On 31 March 1945, an Allied bombing raid destroyed hundreds of buildings and much of Rothenburg's medieval wall in a single afternoon, with a full ground assault due next. The town was spared from finishing that fate almost by accident. John McCloy, the American assistant secretary of war, had never once visited Rothenburg himself, but his mother had, decades earlier, and had come home so full of stories about the place that he grew up with a soft spot for it. When the order came through to level the town, McCloy talked the commanding general into negotiating a surrender instead, and Rothenburg's medieval streets survived because one man remembered his mother's holiday photos.

This poster is an original illustration in watercolour and ink, painted by Ella for the Ella's Adventures travel poster series.

No frame included.