The Bächle are the small, fast-flowing water channels that run along the edge of nearly every street in Freiburg's old town. They were built in the Middle Ages — by the late thirteenth century, certainly — and carried water for fighting fires and watering livestock. The water comes from the Dreisam river east of the city and still flows clear and cold today.
Children float wooden boats in them, dogs drink from them, and tourists step into them with regularity. In summer the cool current sets a gentle microclimate on the otherwise hot pavements. The Bächle are so embedded in the city's identity that the council once seriously considered covering them over for traffic in the 1950s and was forced to back down by public protest.