Germany 2022 : 2022-08-18 : Rakotzbrücke and Bad Muskau

Activity
Type Name Description Service Provider Cost Kms To Date Total Notes Actions
Sight See Bad Muskau $0.00
Accommodation
Type Name Service Provider Confirmation Location Cost Notes Actions
Couch Surf Stay with Dietmar and Brigitte $0.00


Trip Log

Notes Actions
Quite a while before our actual visit I had asked Dietmar if we could go see Rakotsbrücke. His original plan was that we would ride there by bicycle, about a 20km hilly ride. It has been too hot for riding, so instead we took the car and also visited Bad Muskau, and a couple of sites in Spremberg itself: the Bismarck tower and the beautiful building that houses the music school and library.
About Rakotsbrücke:

This jaw-dropping 19th-century bridge uses its reflection to form what appears to be a perfect circle.

NESTLED AMONG THE VERDANT FOLIAGE in Kromlau, Germany’s Kromlauer Park, is a delicately arched devil’s bridge known as the Rakotzbrücke, which was specifically built to create a circle when it is reflected in the waters beneath it.

Commissioned in 1860 by the knight of the local town, the thin arch stretching over the waters of the Rakotzsee is roughly built out of varied local stone. Like many similarly precarious spans across Europe, the Rakotzbrücke is known as a “devil’s bridge,” due to the colloquialism that such bridges were so dangerous or miraculous that they must have been built by Satan. While the bridge (as with all the others) was created by mortal hands, its builders did seem to hold the aesthetics of the bridge in higher regard than its utility.

Either end of the Rakotzbrücke is decorated with thin rock spires created to look like natural basalt columns, which occur in many places in Germany. In addition, the curvature of the bridge is designed to be one half of a perfect circle, so that when the waters are still and the light is right, it creates the illusion of a complete stone circle.

Today, the bridge can still be viewed in the park, but crossing the aging relic is prohibited in order to preserve it.


Photos