Rheda-Wiedenbrück Travel Guide

The first church at this place was founded 785. The one which you see there now, was build 1505, with having some older parts.
St Aegidius is a catholic church and is situated in the center of the old town of Wiedenbrück, between two places: the market place with some old houses where twice a week a market takes place, and the church place, where you are allowed to park only during masses.

This house with the nice rococo gate was build 1586 by Johannes Hesing and his wife Magdalena Ostberg, one year after the huge burning of Wiedenbrück. You’ll find their names in the sayings.

Also very interesting in the Latin saying just over the gate is that it has some letters highlighted by being bigger than the others. These letters are Roman numbers (I, V, X, L, C, D, M) and if you add them you get the year when the house was build. I didn’t succeed, though, I’m still missing two!

This half-timbered house is called House Ottens and was build 1635.

Very special for the half-timbered houses in Wiedenbrück are the long sayings on them. I hadn’t seen this before. These sayings are either in German (in a local dialect) or in Latin and are mostly of a religious nature. The one on these house asks God to protect the house against burning and robbery.

Wiedenbrück has lots of nice half-timbered houses. Some can be found at the street “Lange Strasse” (long street) which you can see here on the photo. There are lots of interesting carvings on the houses. Very typical are the round arch gates which were big enough to let pass the vehicle with the crop. Next to these gates, you mostly find the year of construction of the house, so you can see that lots of these old buildings are more than 400 years old.

There are several playgrounds in the park. One is a “water playground” with lots of sand, I guess you have to wash your children very well afterwards! Then there is the one of the picture, with something to climb, a climb and some other things. And finally there’s the so-called “Spielerei”, with water again, a little petting zoo, a pool with tubs, a place for skaters with halfpipes, and more. A paradise for children!

Flora Westfalica is a park of a length of nearly 3km and leads along the small river Ems from the old centre of Wiedenbrück to the old centre of Rheda. In Wiedenbrück, it’s starts at a little lake with a café, and in Rheda it ends at the castle. There are several playgrounds on the way and nice paths with several small bridges. Take those paths and not the big main way!

This park was the place of a Garden Festival 1988. There are regular National Garden Festivals and Garden Festivals of the individual lands of Germany – this year (2005) the National Garden Festival is in Munich and the one of Nordrhein-Westfalen in Leverkusen. After the Garden Festivals, it was decided to continue to cultivate the park, so you can still enjoy it but without having to pay any admission!