Medieval cultural monuments

In the Middle Ages, pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela used the Milky Way’s fine trail of stars in the night sky as a guide. The European model project “Sternenweg/Chemin des étoiles” symbolically refers to this cosmic “waymarker” of our ancestors and sees itself in the present as a large-regional contribution to the careful valorization of the paths of the pilgrims of St. James in parts of the Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate as well as Lorraine and Alsace.

On their pilgrimages “bis to the end of the world” countless people created a network of paths that shaped the cultural-historical roots of Europe. Explore the lines of movement of these pilgrims and sense the special spirituality that nourished their strength and inspiration and that reverberates in the medieval building culture along the way to the present day.

Through more than 350 recorded visible testimonies of medieval building culture, the model project aims to symbolically scatter a “star trail” along the route axes of the pilgrims of St. James in the project area, which people can follow in an individual way. This search for traces involuntarily highlights the special facets of the passing European cultural landscapes and the more than 1000-year-old culture of being on the way in the spirit of a pilgrimage.

On the interactive interactive map the individual medieval cultural monuments are shown with a red dot. When you click on it, you will receive in a small window the GPS position, a short art-historical information about the respective object with the medieval reference, under “i” the touristic contact person as well as, if applicable, the hint how many kilometers the medieval monument is located off the officially marked paths on foot.