Externsteine

The Externsteine are a dramatic row of jagged sandstone pillars rising up to 40 metres from the Teutoburg Forest, their strata tilted almost vertical by ancient earth movements. Around 1120 monks carved into one rock a large relief of the Descent from the Cross, one of the oldest monumental sculptures north of the Alps, and cut chambers and a chapel into the stone. A round hole in an upper chamber aligns with the sunrise at the summer solstice, fuelling theories of pagan astronomical use. In the Nazi era, Heinrich Himmler's researchers seized on the rocks as a supposed ancient Germanic cult site and staged excavations to prove it, part of the regime's mythology of Aryan antiquity. Today the site is a protected natural monument.