Gabelmann

The Gabelmann fountain stands in Bamberger Altstadt beside the pedestrian zone. It shows the Roman sea-god Neptune holding his trident, a figure the locals call the ‘Gabelmann’ because of his forked staff. Beneath the statue is a broad stone basin fed by four spouts that once supplied drinking water to the town.

The fountain’s history reaches back to 1337 when a wooden pipe network carried water from the Stephansberg spring through the streets and even under the Regnitz to the market square. In the early 1500s the Nuremberg councillor Ludwig Krug left 800 gulden for a new fountain, but the money was smuggled into Bamberg inside a salt slab. The city finally erected the present structure in 1566 under Master Jorg Walbergk of Kulmbach.

Today visitors find the bronze Neptune standing on a tall pedestal surrounded by iron railings. Water still spouts from the four pipes, glinting in sunlight as described in Hans Morper’s Bamberg dialect poems. The spot remains a favourite meeting place where people gather around the fountain’s basin.