Photos

Close-up of half-timbered housing construction (“Fachwerk” in German), where the timber provides a visible skeletal frame that supports the whole building. This photo is from downtown Trier, a 2,000 year old Roman city near Luxembourg, which makes it the oldest official city in Germany.

OK, skip the rest if you only want to look at the picture, but for everyone like me who likes more interesting info (which is part of what distinguishes TE from other photo sites), then here goes: This type of construction, which was common for German houses beginning in the 1500’s, uses a frame of heavy timbers with bracing at the corners, doors, and windows. After the frame was built, the spaces between the timbers were filled with other building materials. Lots of them have decorative, elaborate timber carvings between the main support timbers, as you can see in this photo. This decorative part, along with the imperfections in each piece of wood, gives each house a unique look. It’s pretty clear by looking at the two-foot offset in levels, and also the different styles of the red curved timbers, that this picture shows two separate buildings.

www.fachwerk.de says there are about 2 million Fachwerk style houses in Germany, although surprisingly the wood isn’t visible for about 80% of these houses so you’d probably never know unless you were inside.

Germany has a 2,000 km long route (“Deutsche Fachwerkstrasse”) that links towns with some of the nicest of Germany’s medieval Fachwerk, although over the 3 years I lived in Germany I saw plenty beautiful and unique half-timbered houses that aren’t on that route.

increased contrast, plus increased saturation to make the red brighter