Peesten is a Franconian village built around a tree you can walk inside. A spiral staircase climbs into the crown of its trained lime and comes out in an 87-square-metre room, a structure regional guides call unique in Europe, and the village has been dancing on it every June for more than 300 years. The tradition is older than the trunk holding it up: the original tree was felled in 1947 after three centuries of service, and the one standing today is its trained successor.
0 / 1 visitati a Peesten
Foto: Ermell (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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Tanzlinde (Peesten)
Large-leaved Lime (Tilia platyphyllos) · current tree about 70-75 years (replanted 1953); the dance-floor tradition and stone structure are 300+ years old · Peesten, Kulmbach
A spiral staircase runs up into this tree and comes out in a room. The dance floor built into the crown covers 87 square metres, resting on sandstone pillars raised in the 18th century, and regional accounts call the squared-off, cube-like shape of the whole thing unique in Europe. The village still uses it. Peesten has danced on its lime at the Kirchweih on the second weekend of June for more than 300 years, and there is a small museum in the village explaining how you train a tree into a building. Be clear about what you are looking at, because the structure is older than the trunk holding it. The first Tanzlinde here appears in a municipal record of 1657 and was probably planted between 1550 and 1600; it served the village for three centuries and had to be felled in 1947. A new summer lime went in on the same spot in the early 1950s, the timber hall was rebuilt to the old design in 2001, and the tree you climb into today measures 2.91 metres round and is about eighty years old. It is the tradition that is ancient, carried forward through a young tree, which is how these dance limes have always survived. Free, in the open village centre next to the church.
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