Reality 500km: Fachwerk, The German Framework Road

Monday, January 28, 2008

Fachwerk, The German Framework Road

Today I´ve got a post card from my friend from Bamberg
and It inspired me to write about the things I love about Germany.
As for instance framework or half-timbered houses.

photo by me, Nienburg 2007

places I strongly recommend to visit

Timber framing (German: Fachwerk) is the description of how a house is built using mortise and tenon joinery. There are several ways of describing timber framing.
The techniques used in timber framing date back thousands of years, and have been used in many parts of the world during various periods such as ancient Japan, Europe and medieval England.
Half-timbered construction in the Northern European vernacular building style is characteristic of medieval and early modern Denmark, England, Germany and parts of France, in localities where timber was in good supply and building stone and the skills to work it were in short supply.

Every country has Its traditions in framework, but for me the main country of half-timbered houses is Germany. The Deutsche Fachwerkstraße, the “Route that links Germany’s Medieval Timber-framed Houses”, runs from Lower Saxony in the north of the country, via Hesse and southern Thuringia to Bavaria is an area renowned for its highly picturesque half-timbered buildings.

The German Framework Road, founded in 1990, runs meanwhile from the river Elbe to the Lake Constance through six federal states (Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Hesse, Thuringia, Bavaria and Baden Wuerttemberg) and is divided into nine regional routes.
MAP