The Wirtshaus is the least conspicuous part of Franconian beer culture and at the same time the largest. It appears in guidebooks less often than the Keller, and it disappears faster.
A Franconian Wirtshaus is inn and meeting place in one, usually with a closing day of its own and a menu that takes Brotzeit seriously. The number of inns in Bavaria fell from almost 7,900 to fewer than 4,400 between 1980 and 2011, and around 500 municipalities in the state have none at all.
A restaurant lives on its kitchen, a pub on what it pours. The Wirtshaus is both and something third: the place a village meets when there is nowhere else left. Hence the Stammtisch, hence the weekly closing day, hence the short menu.
For a visit that means one thing above all: check the opening hours and the closing day beforehand. Many houses close on a fixed weekday, and in small places the kitchen is staffed only at certain hours. That is rarely reliable online; a call, or the house's own page, helps more than any list.
A handful of words come up in a Wirtshaus that are worth knowing before you order: Seidla, Schnitt, Brotzeit, Kellerbier. The vocabulary article explains each one.
The full Franconian beer vocabulary →The disappearance of the Wirtshaus is not a mood, it is counted. Around 500 Bavarian municipalities have none left at all, according to DEHOGA. Behind that lies a long decline: the state counted almost 7,900 inns in 1980 and fewer than 4,400 by 2011, and between 2000 and 2018 another 1,500 or more closed for good.
The state is trying to push back. The Heimatministerium supports a research project at Otto-Friedrich University Bamberg with 183,321 euros. It runs for three years and develops ways for people to keep their own inn going as volunteers.
Figures: Regierung der Oberpfalz, 2021. Funding: Bavarian state portal.
Most of the places in our directory are inns. Not breweries, not Keller, but inns. Anyone looking for something Franconian in the evening, outside the Keller season, almost always ends up in one.
Every inn in the directory, with place, address and map point: see the inns on the map.
The figures on this page come from these sources. We cite them so you can read them yourself.
Finding an inn is easy. Finding one that is open and suits the area takes two more steps.
