Seasons1 of 4
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.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Village centre, next to the church, Peesten, a district of Kasendorf, Kulmbach district, Bavaria
You can recognise it by the spiral staircase running up into its crown, where an 87 square metre dance floor rests on 18th century sandstone pillars. It stands in Peesten's village centre, next to the church.
Peesten, a district of Kasendorf, Kulmbach district, Bavaria (Fraenkische Schweiz region); a car is the practical way in.
In bloom
mid-June, when the lime flowers and the village dances up in the crown at the Kirchweih
The line is our estimate of how much there is to see, not a measurement. Typical for this species where this tree stands; exact weeks shift with the year.
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.