There are many places in Germany that are worth descending into otherwise hidden worlds. Excursions into the underworld are a special experience, especially for Berlin tourists.
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11 x Discover Germany from below
An excursion into Germany's underworlds can be many things: adventurous, creepy, exciting. Here are tips for colorful caves, abandoned mines, decommissioned bunkers and tunnels steeped in history.
Image: picture-alliance/imagebroker
The myth of Germania, Berlin
This is how Hitler imagined the gigantic redesign of Berlin. The model can be seen in the museum of the "Berliner Unterwelten" association in the former shelter at the Gesundbrunnen railway station. The association also offers various historical underground tours, where you can experience the Cold War escape tunnels between East and West Berlin or Germany's first underground tunnel.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/O. Mehlis
Saalfeld Fairy Grottoes, Thuringia
A fairy tale-like world in innumerable shades of color - this former mine was once used to mine alum slate. In the course of time, nature has transformed the resulting underground cavities into a fascinating stalactite world. The Saalfeld fairy grottoes are listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the "most colorful fairy-tale grottoes in the world".
Image: picture-alliance/imagebroker
Old Elbe Tunnel in Hamburg
In the past, this is how dock workers and shipyard workers got to work under the Elbe; today, the tunnel dating from 1911 is a tourist attraction. Elevators take pedestrians and cyclists down into the depths, cars use the hydraulically operated carriages. The light of the historical lamps gives the tiled tunnel its very own atmosphere.
Image: picture-alliance/Arco Images
Nuremberg rock passages, Bavaria
Over the centuries, the citizens of Nuremberg dug vaults and corridors into the sandstone beneath their city. After all, everyone who wanted to brew and sell beer had to have their own beer cellar to store and ferment it. During the Second World War, many citizens of Nuremberg found protection from air raids in the widely branched underground labyrinth.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/D.l Karmann
Mittelbau-Dora in Nordhausen, Thuringia
Prisoners of the Buchenwald concentration camp were forced to assemble the dreaded V2 rockets in the underground tunnels of the southern Harz region under inhuman conditions during World War II. 20,000 of the 60,000 prisoners died in the underground armaments factory. A guided tour of the Mittelbau-Dora memorial gallery is available.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C. Welz
Government shelter in Ahrweiler, Rhineland-Palatinate
This alternative seat government was created in 1959 in two former railway tunnels. It was an underground city, intended for several thousand inhabitants. Equipped with hundreds of sleeping chambers and offices, canteens, a church, television studio, and even a hairdressing salon. There were no culinary delicacies: In the event of a nuclear emergency, folks would have lived mainly on canned food.
Image: DW/Maksim Nelioubin
Imperial Baths in Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate
The ancient Romans used to bathe here, but today only the remains of the large spa can be visited. The guided tours through the underground passages are particularly exciting. In the past, these led to the stoves that heated the water and the floors. Today the corridors occasionally serve as a romantic backdrop for readings and concerts.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/H. Tittel
Rammelsberg Goslar, Lower Saxony
The miners' clothing is a reminder of more than a thousand years of mining history in the Harz mountains: copper, silver and lead ores were mined on Rammelsberg as early as the Middle Ages. In 1992, UNESCO declared Rammelsberg a World Heritage Site, the first industrial monument in Germany. Guided tours take you deep into the old tunnels and the history of mining.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Pförtner
Oppenheim ossuary, Rhineland-Palatinate
The Oppenheim Vault is the largest of its kind in Germany. Bones and skulls pile up to the ceiling. In earlier centuries, wars, famines and epidemics made cemetery space scarce. Therefore the remains of the dead, after a certain period, were dug up and moved here to be neatly stacked in rows.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/F. von Erichsen
Merkers Adventure Mines, Thuringia
You can of course book the classic underground tour in the former Merkers potash mine, which leads to a crystal grotto and to the largest underground bucket wheel excavator in the world. But there's more to the adventure mine than that: there are rock concerts and underground tours by mountain bike.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. Schackow
Königstein Fortress, Saxony
The fortress Königstein towers over the Elbe valley and hides its underground vaults, which were dug deep into the sandstone rocks: like the about 152 meters deep well shaft, which supplied the castle with water. Or the bomb-proof vaults of the powder storerooms. Or the cellar in which the giant wine barrel of August the Strong, King of Saxony, was once stored.
Image: Festung Königstein GmbH
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Outside, the everyday life of the Berlin Gesundbrunnen subway station is quite normal - and hardly anyone knows that behind the green door there are rooms steeped in history. The "Berliner Unterwelten" association has set up a museum here.
The museum shows many things that are or once were underground in Berlin. Not only bunkers and subways, but also the Berliner Rohrpost (pneumatic dispatch system), huge brewery cellars or the sewage system. Many underground finds from the Second World War have been excavated and exhibited.
Since 1997, the non-profit association Berliner Unterwelten e.V. has made some spectacular, historical and often forgotten places accessible again. They show a different, hidden, often a little eerie Berlin. Their tours tell of the rapid rise of the German capital, of destruction, division, reunification.
The ruins of the Flak tower in Berlin's Humboldthain, which was blown up after the Second World War and filled with over 1.5 million cubic metres of rubble, have also been made accessible again by the Berliner Unterwelten association.