Stroll through the vaults of ancient chapels, explore a prison camp, rummage through an archive: At this year's "Open Monument Day", visitors can track down the history of several hundred historic buildings in Bavaria.
Munich (dpa/lby) - Their doors are usually closed to the public - but on "Open Monument Day" more than 500 historical places in Bavaria are open to the curious. On Sunday, the nationwide event will include visits, guided tours and lectures. This year, the German Foundation for Monument Protection (DSD) is focusing on the work of monument conservators with the motto "KulturSpuren".
The Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation (BLfD) opens its offices in Munich, Regensburg and Thierhaupten near Augsburg for the day. The building archive is now housed in the former Thierhaupten monastery, which also houses a collection of historical components. These include fragments of Roman buildings, but also elements of the Munich Olympic Stadium.
In Moosburg an der Isar in the district of Freising in Upper Bavaria, visitors can explore one of the largest prisoner of war camps of the Second World War. From 1939, tens of thousands of soldiers were imprisoned in Stalag VII A. Lectures provide insights into the history of the complex, which consists of several barracks, some of which are dilapidated. In the Sankt Emmeram monastery in Regensburg, guided tours are offered through a chapel in which wall paintings from several centuries have been preserved. The vault was destroyed in the course of secularization and later reconstructed.
In terms of this year's motto, it is particularly important to make the history visible that monuments could tell, explains the head of the BLfD, Mathias Pfeil: "They show how our ancestors lived and built, how they saw the world."
In the past two years, the "Day of the Open Monument" had mainly taken place digitally due to the corona, for example with videos and audio contributions that could be accessed online. Also this year, the Foundation for the Protection of Monuments is providing digital content that can be used via app - such as three-dimensional tours through individual monuments.
The DSD has been coordinating the day nationwide since 1993 and every year on the second Sunday in September. People then visit old churches and monasteries, castle ruins, palaces, excavation sites, mills or simply the neighbor's house, which is under monument protection. According to the BLfD, there are around 109,000 architectural monuments and 49,000 ground monuments with archaeological remains in Bavaria.
