Rakotz Bridge
Rakotzbrücke
Interesting facts
- Locally the bridge is also known as the Devil's Bridge, or Teufelsbrücke in German.
- Its construction is usually dated to between 1866 and 1875, when the estate owner Friedrich Hermann Rötschke was reshaping the park.
- The thin basalt columns standing in the lake beside the bridge are known as the Organ.
- The bridge belongs to a Romantic ensemble that also includes a grotto, the basalt Organ and a smaller devil's bridge over a little artificial torrent.
- Its builder, the knight's-estate owner Friedrich Hermann Rötschke, lived from 1805 to 1893.
- The bridge appears in the 2021 film The Matrix Resurrections, in a combat simulation scene with Morpheus.
- The Everdoor in the 2020 video game Spiritfarer, a bridge that forms a circle with its reflection, was inspired by the Rakotzbrücke.
- The bridge features on the coat of arms of the municipality of Gablenz, alongside apples, a play on Jabłońc, the village's Sorbian name.
- After the Second World War the park was nationalised, and it has remained free to enter ever since.
Why it is worth it
The Rakotzbrücke is a bridge built to be looked at rather than crossed. Its slender arch rises so steeply over the Rakotzsee that, on a still day, it meets its own reflection to make an almost perfect circle, and its two ends are finished with thin basalt columns, arranged like organ pipes, that look as if they grew out of the water.
It was commissioned around 1860 by Friedrich Hermann Rötschke, a landowner who spent decades turning the grounds of a former estate at Kromlau, in Upper Lusatia near the Polish border, into an English landscape park. The bridge is only about 7.8 metres long, with an inner arch radius of 2.2 metres, and it is built with basalt columns selected and brought from distant quarries. Its name comes from the Upper Sorbian word for crab. After years of decay it was thoroughly restored in 2018–2019, and walking on it is not allowed, both to protect the structure and for safety.
The bridge is the star of the 80-hectare Kromlau Azalea and Rhododendron Park, but not its only folly: the park has other bridges, ponds and lakes, and a Kavalierhaus. The best time to come is late spring, when the rhododendrons and azaleas are in flower, and the best light for the circle is a windless morning, when the surface of the lake is still. Autumn colour gives a second season.
Getting there
Kromlau is part of the municipality of Gablenz in the district of Görlitz, eastern Saxony, a few kilometres from the town of Weißwasser. Dresden Airport (DRS) is about 75 km to the south-west. Entry to the park is free; there is a paid car park.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Muskau Park 5.9 km · historic-garden
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Kromlau Azalea and Rhododendron Park is an 80-hectare (200-acre) landscaped park in the village of Kromlau, in the municipality of Gablenz (Jabłońc) in the region of Lusatia, in the very east of the German state of Saxony, close to the border with Poland. It was created in the nineteenth century, reportedly on the grounds of a former feudal estate, by Friedrich Herrmann Rötschke. Following World War II, the park was nationalized by the government, and has no admission fee. The park is an example of an English landscape garden, and it contains many small ponds and lakes. Its most well-known element is the Rakotz Bridge, a bridge especially built to create a circle when it is reflected in the water beneath it.
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