Steffeln Volcano Garden 54597 Steffeln
A partially preserved crater filling, an extremely informative tour and goats as landscape managers - the Steffeln volcanic garden is worth your visit.
The inner workings of the volcanoes can be experienced particularly impressively in the Steffeln Volcano Garden. The dismantling of the Steffelberg exposed the layers in the volcanic crater that were created during the eruptions.
The originally 609 meter high Steffelberg volcano has lost around sixty meters in a century due to the mining of volcanic slag. But the “hole in the landscape” revealed something else: the different layers of the volcanic eruptions, which, when looking into the crater, show how complex the eruptive event was. Fine and coarse material, lapilli and ash alternate. In the area of the former chimney from which the glowing material rose, two basalt veins intersect - a unique characteristic of the Steffenkopf. It was created when, after the first major eruption, hot lava rose again and formed a kind of lake.
The Eifel Association offers guided tours from Steffeln, where the church and former rectory stand on a lava tuff ring. There are also special geo-excursions led by expert guides.
Here the goat becomes a gardener ;-)
During your tour of the volcano garden, you will learn a lot of interesting facts at 15 information stations. In order to preserve the interesting geological outcrops in the volcano garden and to prevent the facility from being completely overgrown by vegetation, a herd of goats is used as “landscape caretakers” in the volcano garden as part of an ecological grazing project.