Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Landscapes & Wildlife
The Land
In Bavaria and the Black Forest nature has been as prolific and
creative as Picasso in his prime. The most dramatic region is the
Bavarian Alps, a phalanx of craggy peaks created by tectonic
uplift some 770 million years ago and chiselled and gouged by
glaciers and erosion ever since. Several limestone ranges stand
sentinel above the rest of the land, including, west to east, the
Allgäuer Alps, the glaciated Wetterstein/Karwendel Alps (with
Germany's highest mountain, the Zugspitze at 2962m) and the
Berchtesgadener Alps. Many peaks tower well above 2000m.
North of here, the Alpine Foothills are a lush mosaic of
moorland, rolling hills, gravel plains and pine forests dappled
with glacial lakes, including the vast Chiemsee, Starnberger See
and the Ammersee. The foothills are book-ended by Lake Con-
stance in the west and the Inn and Salzach Rivers in the east.
The Bavarian Forest in eastern Bavaria is a classic
Mittelgebirge,
a midsize mountain
range, and one of Germany's greatest unknowns. Its highest peak, the Grosse Arber
(1456m), juts out like the tall kid in your school photo. Much of it is blanketed by dark,
dense forests that fade into the thinly populated Frankenwald and Fichtelgebirge areas fur-
ther north.
The Black Forest, in Germany's southwestern corner, is another
Mittelgebirge
, a storied
quilt that enwraps waterfalls, rolling hills, sparkling lakes, lush vineyards, and oak, pine
and beech forests into one mystique-laden package. The little Kinzig River divides the
north from the much higher south, where the Feldberg is the highest elevation at 1493m.
Much of Franconia and Swabia is a complex
patchwork of low ranges, rifts and deep mean-
dering valleys. A Jurassic limestone range is re-
sponsible for bizarre rock formations, such as
those in the Franconian Switzerland region
north of Nuremberg.
Southern Germany is traversed by several
major rivers, of which the Danube, which originates in the Black Forest, and the Main are
Statistically
Speaking
» Highest peak: Zugspitze
(2962m) in the Bavarian Alps
» Biggest lake: Lake Con-
stance (536 sq km), Europe's
third largest
» Tallest waterfall: Triberger
Wasserfälle (163m)
» Largest nature park: 12,000
sq km Black Forest
Bavaria sprawls over 70,550 sq km, making it big-
ger than Ireland, Portugal or Denmark. The Black
Forest is comparatively small at only 13,500 sq km
in total.
