View of a brick restaurant

Marktplatz Rheinland

Market-place Rhineland
In the Open Air Museum the „Market-place Rheinland" constitutes a further milestone in the arc of cultural history, which will then stretch from the 15th century to the most recent past. Thereby the new Group of Buildings will be dedicated to the second half of the 20th century and will thus be chronologically connected to the permanent exhibition „We Rhinelanders".
This new Group of Buildings is still under construction.
The Market-place Rhineland is dedicated to the time from 1945 until the early 21st century. It shows the urbanization of the rural areas, associated with the disappearance of traditional images of country life.
Around a village, or market-place, various buildings from different historical areas of daily life will stand, from the post-war and economic miracle times: restaurant, hairdresser’s salon, corner shop (Tante-Emma-Laden), pharmacist, optician, baker’s and butcher’s shops, cinema, church and others. In the course of decades numerous new types of buildings are developed, which are marked by a nationwide similarity of the construction industry. Prefabricated houses and flat-roofed bungalows characterize the new housing estates bordering on the villages.
The serious changes of the 20th century are to be collected, documented and presented to visitors in the form of original buildings and their original furnishings. Buildings of various centuries from Rhenish landscapes will be translocated to the Open Air Museum and placed there following the example of village structures which historically grew together, to show their relationship to each other. Even though such a depiction in an open air museum cannot be identical to historical reality - which cannot be depicted – these many original objects, together with the buildings at the Market-place Rhineland, illustrate life in the second half of the 20th century graphically, making it understandable, or even making it „come alive“.
Details and background to
marketplace Rhineland

site plan

Other assemblies

The Westerwald is a typical German low mountain range. It is an area where people lived in villages. No scattered individual farms, not even small hamlets, but more or less large villages had arisen here.
Westerwald Cobblestone path, half-timbered houses on the right
Village settlements determine the image of the Eifel. There are large, closed street and cluster villages mainly in the foothills and the early settled peripheral zones of the Eifel.
Eifel red poppy field, in the background chapel and half-timbered house
On the Lower Rhine there was a different way of doing business and living than in the low mountain ranges. Since the extensive wet pastures favor the keeping of cattle, a dairy and cheese industry developed.
Niederrhein Path along thatched half-timbered houses
Individual farms and hamlets shaped the image of the Bergisches Land. Residential stable houses with separate barns and storerooms formed the courtyards.
Bergisches Land Horses in a meadow, half-timbered houses in the background

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