Once you reach the Pfahlbaumuseum at Unteruhldingen you will be astonished: within the Lake Constance and at its shore there are more than twenty different houses standing on wooden poles. You can walk on elevated paths and platforms around them, get inside and experience how life in this region was more than 6,000 years ago. Of course these buildings are all reconstructions, but they’re based on archaelogical work. The water preserved the timber, the construction dates can be read from the wood and the findings from the ground of the lake are on display at the museum.
The Pfahlbautenmuseum at Unteruhldingen is one of the largest and most-visited open-air museums in Europe. You can tour it on your own, but every half hour you can also join a short tour giving you an overview and an insight into its past. You’ll learn that people in Europe living close to lakes started 10,000 years ago to build their houses on wooden pools. But they didn’t do it inside the water, they did it close to the shore. This way their houses could withstand rising water levels and live at the the lake gave them the possibility to trade more easy and good access to water and food.
Around 250 settlements of this kind are known today and 111 of them across six European countries became a UNESCO world heritage site in 2011. One of them (Unteruhldingen-Stollenwiesen) is 500 meters south of the Pfahlbautenmuseum, but not part of the exhibition. The museum itself dates back to the year 1922 and it was founded by a group of people interested in pre-historic times. The employees continuously have to replace parts of the buildings because of the material – in ancient times the inhabitants rebuilt them completely every twenty years.
If you want to reach the Pfahlbauten by public transport there are different options: different ships stop directly at the harbour of Unteruhldingen, next bus stop is Unteruhldingen Meersburger Straße. The bus line 7395 which runs along the shore takes you there. If you’re coming from Konstanz you can take bus 700 which first goes up the hill to the stop Meersburg Kirche and there you can get bus 7395 to the museum.
Pfahlbauten Unteruhldingen
Strandpromenade 6
88690 Uhldingen-Mühlhofen
Germany
https://www.pfahlbauten.de
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