The Barbarossa Cave

When miners accidentally discovered natural cave chambers in 1865 while searching for copper shale, they must have thought they had found it. For the name Barbarossa Cave quickly spread. Now something extraordinary happened for the time: the mine became a show cave, and the first visitors came just a few days after the discovery. Incidentally, admission cost 5 silbergroschen back then - as much as 15 eggs or a stick of butter.
Then as now, people are impressed by the magic of the Barbarossa Cave: a mysterious world with palatial halls, bizarre stone formations, "plaster paintings" and crystal-clear, blue-green shimmering lakes - on around 13. 000 m², visitors truly experience a palace worthy of an emperor, with Olympus, dance hall, Neptune's grotto, crystal ceiling, bacon chamber and cloudy sky.
As one of only two visitor caves in the world in anhydrite rock, the Barbarossa Cave is a geological rarity. The new information centre of the Kyffhäuser Geopark at the cave is expected to provide exciting insights into the history of the earth from spring 2020.