Königsstuhl (Rügen)
Königsstuhl
Interesting facts
- The granite steps up to the Königsstuhl's summit plateau, only about 200 square metres in area, cover what is believed to be a Bronze Age burial mound.
- The chalk of the cliff formed roughly 70 million years ago, in the Maastrichtian age at the very end of the Cretaceous, from a fine, highly porous limestone.
- Storms keep tearing chunks from the Jasmund cliffs, and the falls expose fossils of sponges, oysters and sea urchins from the Cretaceous sea floor.
- Across the Baltic, Denmark's Møns Klint has a matching chalk pinnacle called Dronningestolen, the Queen's Chair.
- Jasmund National Park, which protects the cliff, was created in September 1990 by the last government of East Germany, weeks before reunification.
- The 2023 Skywalk took about two years to build and cost around 11 million euros.
- The Königsstuhl appears on Germany's 2-euro commemorative coin for Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, issued from January 2024.
- Around 300,000 people come to the Königsstuhl every year, making it one of the main attractions on Rügen.
Why it is worth it
The Königsstuhl, the "King's Chair", is the best-known of the chalk cliffs of Jasmund on the island of Rügen, a white crag rising 118 metres above the Baltic on the stretch of coast called the Stubbenkammer. From its small top the view falls almost straight down to the shingle and the pale turquoise water, and along the coast in both directions the cliffs continue in a broken white wall, crowned with the green of beech forest. The contrast of white rock, blue sea and fresh green leaves is the classic image of Rügen, and Caspar David Friedrich, the great painter of German Romanticism, came to these cliffs and drew on them for his work.
The cliffs belong to the Rügen Chalk and are constantly being worn back by the sea, frost and thaw; in February 2005 the famous Wissower Klinken, a neighbouring pinnacle of chalk, collapsed into the Baltic, and fresh white scars still open along the coast. The forests that run right up to the edge are among the old beech woods of Europe inscribed by UNESCO in 2011, and the cliffs and woods together form Jasmund National Park, founded in 1990 and the smallest national park in Germany. Yews, wild service trees and orchids grow here, and white-tailed eagles and peregrine falcons hunt along the cliffs.
The origin of the name is still debated. A popular story says that the Swedish king Charles XII directed a naval battle from here in 1715 and had a chair brought because he was exhausted, but the name was already recorded in 1586; older tradition held that a newly chosen king had to climb the cliff from the sea and sit on its top to prove himself. Since 2004 the cliff has been part of the Königsstuhl National Park Centre, and in 2023 a new viewing platform, the Skywalk, opened: a freestanding looped walkway about 90 metres long, hung from a 42-metre mast, built so that visitors no longer stand on the crumbling top itself. The best view of the Königsstuhl's white face is from the nearby Victoria-Sicht viewpoint.
Getting there
The Königsstuhl lies in the north-east of Rügen, about 56 km from Greifswald in a straight line; the nearest town is Sassnitz, from which an 11-kilometre path along the cliff top leads past the Königsstuhl to Lohme. Heringsdorf Airport (HDF) on Usedom is about 84 km away. Cars must stay at the car park in Hagen, about 3 km from the cliff, from where a path leads through the beech forest to the National Park Centre.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Königsstuhl is the best-known chalk cliff on the Stubbenkammer in Jasmund National Park on the Baltic Sea island of Rügen. It lies at 118 m above sea level (NN).
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
54.57306, 13.66250per Wikidata