The Ravenna Gorge (german: Ravennaschlucht) is a

gorge A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosion, erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tenden ...

in the

Black Forest The Black Forest (german: Schwarzwald ) is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is t ...

in southwest

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. It is a narrow side valley of the Höllental, through which the Ravenna stream flows. A trail also runs through the ravine as part of the Black Forest Homeland Path (''Heimatpfad Hochschwarzwald''). The roughly four-kilometre-long gorge runs from the Höllental up to the village of

Breitnau Breitnau is a municipality in the district of Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany, about 30 kilometres from the city of Freiburg im Breisgau. It is located within the High Black Forest. Geography The municipalit ...

on the plateau and lies within its municipal boundaries. The name of the gorge is probably derived from the French word ''ravine'' which means "gorge". The wild mountain brook of the Ravenna tumbles over several

waterfall A waterfall is a point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in several wa ...

s in the gorge. The two biggest falls are the Great Ravenna Fall (''Großer Ravennafall'') which is 16 metres high and the Little Ravenna Fall (''Kleiner Ravennafall'') which descends through a height of 6 metres. In former times, there were several

water mill A watermill or water mill is a mill that uses hydropower. It is a structure that uses a water wheel or water turbine to drive a mechanical process such as milling (grinding), rolling, or hammering. Such processes are needed in the production o ...

s along the stream. Some are still visible today within the gorge and one or two are well preserved. At the upper end of the gorge is the mill of Großjockenmühle which dates to 1883 and is a

protected monument In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. A feature of this mill is that, due to the steep descent of the Ravenna, the water is led over the roof of the mill onto the

water wheel A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or buckets ...

. The lower part of the gorge is spanned by the 37-metre-high Ravenna Bridge, the viaduct of the Höllental Railway. Also here is Saint Oswald’s Chapel (built 1148) and the Hotel ''Hofgut Sternen'', in which

Marie Antoinette Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne (; ; née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria, and was the penultimate child a ...

stayed in 1770 and

Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treat ...

in 1779. In front of the Ravenna Bridge is the ''Galgenbühl'', a knoll about 30 metres high. There used to be a

gallows A gallows (or scaffold) is a frame or elevated beam, typically wooden, from which objects can be suspended (i.e., hung) or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used to suspend public weighing scales for large and heavy objects such as sacks ...

(''Galgen'') here, where executions were carried out. Later a pavilion was built here which fell into ruins over the course of time. The slopes were originally used as pasture, but in the 1950s the mountain was afforested with

spruce A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' (), a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal (taiga) regions of the Earth. ''Picea'' is the sole genus in the subfami ...

and

Douglas fir The Douglas fir (''Pseudotsuga menziesii'') is an evergreen conifer species in the pine family, Pinaceae. It is native to western North America and is also known as Douglas-fir, Douglas spruce, Oregon pine, and Columbian pine. There are three va ...

. In 2010 all the trees were felled, however, and a new pavilion erected on the ''Galgenbühl''. It is covered with

shingles Shingles, also known as zoster or herpes zoster, is a viral disease characterized by a painful skin rash with blisters in a localized area. Typically the rash occurs in a single, wide mark either on the left or right side of the body or face. ...

made of

thuja ''Thuja'' ( ) is a genus of coniferous tree or shrub in the Cupressaceae (cypress family). There are five species in the genus, two native to North America and three native to eastern Asia. The genus is monophyletic and sister to ''Thujopsis''. M ...

wood.Dieter Maurer:
Kreis Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald: Freie Sicht vom Galgenbühl
', Badische Zeitung, 21 October 2010, retrieved 24 June 2011

References

External links

Article with photographs at alemannische-seiten.de
{{Coord, 47, 55, 11, N, 8, 5, 6, E, type:landmark_dim:3000_region:DE-BW, display=title Canyons and gorges of Germany Valleys of Baden-Württemberg Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald Baden