The Black Forest, from Baden-Baden to the Kaiserstuhl

The Black Forest, from the ridge to the vineyards

The loop starts in Freiburg im Breisgau and begins with the north. From Baden-Baden, the Schwarzwaldhochstraße climbs to the ridge, then follows it at between 800 and more than 1,000 metres. It runs for about sixty kilometres to Freudenstadt. On a clear day, you can see the Rhine plain and the Vosges. You stop at the Mummelsee, a small cirque lake, then on the heathland of the Schliffkopf, in the Black Forest National Park.

The road then goes down the Kinzig valley, past half-timbered houses and farmhouses with enormous roofs. In Triberg, the Gutach drops 163 metres in a series of waterfalls, under the fir trees.

The south is higher and more open. The road crosses the Höllental, the “Valley of Hell”, runs along the Titisee and the Schluchsee, the largest lake in the range, then climbs to the Feldberg pass. You walk to the Feldsee or into the Wutach Gorge. Further west, you leave the mountains for the vineyards of the Kaiserstuhl.

The first Black Forest cuckoo clocks date from the 18th century, but cuckoo clocks already existed elsewhere. The best-known design comes from a competition launched in 1850 by the clockmaking school in Furtwangen. Friedrich Eisenlohr, an architect for the Baden railways, entered a front in the shape of a railway lineman’s cottage. You find it on most of the cuckoo clocks sold today. Triberg and Schonach each claim the world’s largest cuckoo clock.

On feast days, in Gutach and two neighbouring Protestant villages, women wear the Bollenhut, a hat with big wool pompoms: red for unmarried girls, black for married women.

The Rhine rift, the glaciers and a volcano

The Black Forest and the Vosges are two halves of the same massif. Tens of millions of years ago, the Earth’s crust sank between the two: this is the Rhine rift valley, where the Rhine flows. In the middle of this plain, the Kaiserstuhl is an extinct volcano, active between 19 and 16 million years ago. It is covered in loess, a dust carried in by the wind. Vines grow there on terraces, in one of the warmest corners of Germany.

In the south, glaciers shaped the land. Below the Feldberg, at 1,494 metres the highest summit in Germany outside the Alps, a glacier carved out the cirque of the Feldsee. The upper Wutach once flowed towards the Danube. During the last glacial period, it turned towards the Rhine. Since then, it has flowed at the bottom of gorges 60 to 170 metres deep.

What not to miss

1. 1Freiburg MinsterA Gothic cathedral and its 116-metre openwork tower, above the market.
2. 2Baden-BadenThe 19th-century spa town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2021, and its Friedrichsbad of 1877.
3. 3GengenbachDuring Advent, the 24 windows of the town hall become a calendar.
4. 4The Allerheiligen waterfallsFalls tumbling in steps below an abbey burnt down by lightning in 1804.
5. 5The domed church of St BlasienA church inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, under a dome 36 metres in diameter.
6. 6StaufenA ruined castle among the vineyards; according to tradition, Doctor Faust died in an inn in the town.

The Black Forest in pictures

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The ruined castle of Staufen above terraced vineyards.

The Black Forest table

Black Forest gateau brings together chocolate sponge, cherries, whipped cream and kirsch. In Germany, you have to be able to taste the kirsch for the cake to carry the name. Black Forest ham, salted and then cold-smoked, has a protected geographical indication.

Near the Schluchsee, the Rothaus state brewery, founded in 1791 by the prince-abbot of St Blasien, brews Tannenzäpfle. At the foot of the mountains, the Baden wine region makes mostly Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris.