"Gaggenau-Bad Rotenfels" Gaggenau by Kathrin_E

The prettiest part of Gaggenau is the spa of Bad Rotenfels. The small village of Rotenfels gained some fame when a Marggrave of Baden built a summer palace in the early 19th century. It gained evern more fame thanks to a failure: Miners searched the ground for coal but instead they found a thermal spring. This lead to the beginning of the spa. In the 1970s Rotenfels finally obtained the title "Bad".

Modern centre of Gaggenau

Gaggenau's town centre has an urban flair and consists of post-war architecture. There is a lot of industry around the town, and this made it a target for World War II bombings. 70% of the town were destroyed. Among the fes preserved or rebuilt pre-war buildings there is the main church, a neo-Romanesque basilica.

Around Gaggenau, nine other villages have become parts of the municipality in the administration reforms of the 1970s. Each tip has the name of the respective suburb/village in capital letters in the title.
So far I have visited Bad Rotenfels and Gaggenau centre, Moosbronn and Michelbach. Some other attractions within Gaggenau's boundaries that deserve a mentioning, although I do not (yet) have the material to write tips about them, include the rafting museum in Hörden, the Unimog museum in Bad Rotenfels, the villages of Sulzbach and Selbach. and the romantic village of Michelbach with its many half-timbered houses. The surroundings provide lots of options for hiking trips in the forests.

Murg river in Bad Rotenfels

The Murg river forms one of the large valleys that lead into the Northern Black Forest. The lower part of the valley is rather wide but the further upstream you go, the narrower it becomes until it is almost a gorge. It has long been important as a traffic route, and the river was used for transporting the wood from the forests down to the Rhine plain and the cities.

Unfortunately landscape design of the 20th century has turned the river into a canal with dykes on both sides and straight-cut banks. The idea was preventing floods by letting the water run off faster. The result is a dead river. Experience has proved that the result is the opposite: the floods are worse than ever because the water has nowhere to go. Nowadays there are some attempts to renaturize the river by creatuíng gravel banks and other irregularities.