Open-air museum in Bad Sobernheim

Large Roman buildings and villas, military buildings from Roman and Medieval times, feudal fortresses and castles, Romanesque abbeys and monasteries, late gothic churches, elaborately half timbered houses of the waning middle ages, magnificent renaissance structures, and substantial baroque houses: these are the impressive representatives of the cultural landscape of the Nahe and Hunsrück region. However, one does not find anything in the brochures about the way most people actually lived in past centuries. It is these modest "monuments of art", though, which give each region its uniqueness. Among these artifacts are farmhouses, village fountains, chapels, crossroads markers, buildings from the time of Germany's industrial revolution, furniture from old houses, hand-workers' tools, or agricultural machinery in the barns. They are a legacy to us and must, therefore, be cared for.

The Rhineland-Pfalz open-air museum is three kilometers from the center of Bad Sobernheim, on the other side of the Nahe in the Nightingales' valley. It was established more than 30 years ago at a time when "old" buildings and structures of the villages and towns, were being increasingly replaced by "modern" ones. Some of them were carefully dismantled by specialists, then transported and rebuilt in their original form on the museum grounds. In the process of doing this, certain parts were sometimes replaced. By doing this, important building types of the Rhineland-Pfalz area could be conserved and made available to the general public. The museum was conceived to combine farmhouses, stalls and barns, workshops of various types, homes and public buildings, as well as smaller objects such as village fountains, road crossing markers, or stone benches into a complete village in itself (museum village). Not only the buildings are of interest to the curators, though. Furniture, dishes, hand-workers tools, and farm machinery are displayed in their correct environments. Above and beyond all this, the visitor gets a close look at techniques which handworkers used in the past, as well as earlier ways of planting and animal husbandry. All in all, it is a worthy monument to the historical contributions of the "common" farmers, handworkers, and laborers of the last centuries and millennia.

Interested in a little tour?

The grounds can be visited throughout the year, although the buildings are only open between the first of April and the end of October, daily except Monday, between 9 o'clock and 5 o'clock.

For further information: Freckmann Klaus, Bad Sobernheim —das Rheinland-Pfälzische Freilichtmuseum; Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg, 2002