Working in Leuphana University in Lüneburg, near Hamburg, we took time out to be given a guided tour of this ancient and traditional German town. We saw loads of five-step gabled houses and heard the Meissen porcelain bells at Das Rathaus toll out the hours. But what tickled my imagination was the story of the fabled White Boar of Lüneburg!
Allegedly, this beast, renowned for its 'nose', sniffed out the best salt deposits under the Lüneburg Heath. It was salt mining, over many centuries, that made the good burghers of the town so rich. Mining only ceased here in 1980, but the signs of centuries of extraction are visible in the subsidence that is prevalent throughout the town, such that some of the houses are still moving and the cobbled roads are treacherous! The subsidence area is most visible in the historic quarter, and it's known as the Senkungsgebiet.
The White Boar? White, because covered in salt - and now one of the icons of Lower Saxony!
Allegedly, this beast, renowned for its 'nose', sniffed out the best salt deposits under the Lüneburg Heath. It was salt mining, over many centuries, that made the good burghers of the town so rich. Mining only ceased here in 1980, but the signs of centuries of extraction are visible in the subsidence that is prevalent throughout the town, such that some of the houses are still moving and the cobbled roads are treacherous! The subsidence area is most visible in the historic quarter, and it's known as the Senkungsgebiet.
The White Boar? White, because covered in salt - and now one of the icons of Lower Saxony!
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