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Our cultural region
The Eifel is a holiday and nature experience destination, which also guarantees versatile and recreational days as far as cultural aspects are concerned. The traces of former inhabitants have remained at many places in the Eifel, where today nature lovers, tourist groups and families can experience exciting holidays.
Apart from exclusive nature experiences, our hiking, bicycle and GPS tours offer you lively impressions during your stay of the diverse cultural heritage of the Eifel holiday region. Our nature guides will take you on time travel during your holidays into eras long past. The holiday will turn into an unforgettable experience thanks to the exciting stories left by the legacies of Stone Age cave dwellers, civilised Celts and Romans, warring knights and pious monks.
We invite families with children and groups of adults interested in nature and culture to go on experience-based rambles through the nature and cultural environment of the Eifel holiday region.
The Eifel's cultural landscape
The development of the Eifel landscapes in the holiday regions of the Vulkaneifel, Rureifel, Nordeifel and the High Fens is closely connected with the cultural development of its people.
In the Neolithic Age people started to change the appearance of the highland landscape in the Eifel region, which originally had been dominated by large deciduous forests. Keeping grazing animals, clearing forests for agriculture and the utilisation of forests for the supply of firewood and building material resulted in the creation of forms of exploitation over the course of the centuries, which still characterises the Eifel landscape today and which you can experience up close and personal on our holiday programmes.
The glorious blossom of the semi-arid meadows in the Kalkeifel or the narcissus and wild garlic meadows in the Northern Eifel would not have come into being without the human activity of annual hay cutting, and is worth a holiday trip not just for nature lovers. Various forms of forestry management also have strongly defined today's landscape in the Eifel holiday region. This is exactly where the Eifel offers a wealth of visual material for experience-orientated nature holidays.
Whilst traces of extensive utilisation such as coppice management are only visible to holidaymakers with a trained eye, the non-native spruce, also called "Prussian Tree", can be recognised directly as a characteristic component of modern forests by all holiday guests. Currently a re-naturing process has begun in the designated Eifel National Park to re-introduce the original Eifel forests, which group and family travellers can observe with anticipation during their holiday stay.
With Celts and Romans into the Middle Ages
To the cultural landscape of the Eifel also includes the structural legacies of the inhabitants who once populated the highland region. We invite you to search for historical evidence, which will turn your holidays into a lively cultural and vacation experience.
Apart from monuments from olden times, such as in the form of the Celtic temple of the Matron or the Roman water viaducts, the castles and monasteries from the Middle Ages such as Burg Nideggen or the lower and upper castle in Manderscheid or the Cistercian monastery in Himmerod, give you an insight into the life of times long passed during your holiday travels. We must also mention the testimony of quarrying iron ore, limestone and millstones as examples of historic mining methods in the Eifel holiday and experience region.
And what would be a cultural environment such as the Eifel without a versatile museum landscape, which gives exciting information about the special features of our holiday region. The Vulkaneifel's Vulkanpark Museums, the National Park Gates of the Nordeifel and the museums of Eastern Belgium and the High Fens await a visit from nature lovers and groups of holidaymakers interested in culture.
We invite you to learn more about the culture of the Eifel holiday region, accompanied by our nature guides during your holiday travels.
The Eifel's special culture
Our castles & monasteries
Numerous castles and monasteries have shaped the history of our cultural region. The defending castles protected the small and minute sovereignties against competing claims to power. The religious and spiritual centres of the region originated behind thick monastery walls.
Historical types of business
Our Eifel is a low mountain range region distinguished by agriculture and forestry with lots of seemingly natural landscapes, many of which have actually been shaped by human hands over the centuries. Mining has also left its mark on the Eifel; something that cannot always be seen at a first glanc.
Celts and Romans
Celts and Romans have shaped the history of settlements in the Eifel over a long time span. Their legacy belongs to the cultural and historical treasures of our low mountain range landscape.
Our museum landscape
Our multifaceted museum landscape is a reflection of the special natural and geological features and the lively history of our Eifel region.
