The best city hikes and walks in Mothäuser Heide

This is the relief map of Marienberg, not Zschopau.

A representative Renaissance building with a roof turret, erected by master builder Johann Hofmann, featuring an impressive portal with a seating niche by Michel von Speyer and Andreas Günther, it is of significant architectural, local historical, and urban planning importance. The town hall, which occupies a large part of the northwest side of Marienberg's market square, is, alongside St. Mary's Church, the most important building in the town from a historical and urban planning perspective. Its structural core dates back to the time of the town's founding, when it replaced a wooden predecessor from 1524 just a few years later. The portals and outer walls from the 16th century are preserved. The representative Renaissance building was erected by master builder Johann Hofmann. The two-story plastered building with rusticated corner pilasters has a massive hipped roof, crowned by a large roof turret in the form of a double lantern (dated 1685, renovated 1790). Source: Wikipedia

The Zschopau Gate, one of Marienberg's landmarks, was built as part of the town's fortifications after its founding between 1541 and 1560. The imposing tower, a rubble stone structure built on a square base, is the only remaining of the original five town gates. The large, round-arched gateway is faced with porphyry blocks, as is the pedestrian underpass to the southwest, which was added in 1956. In 1963, during renovation work, the gate sustained damage from tanks. In 1964, exhibition spaces for museum purposes were designed within the gatehouse, a project approved by the Institute for the Preservation of Historical Monuments. The damaged gate jambs were initially repaired with bricks, and later with dressed stone. To the southwest, a 30-meter-long and 2-meter-wide section of the town wall adjoins the gate. This section is reinforced on the town side with five blind arches and terminates in a transformer station, ingeniously constructed in 1914. Source: Wikipedia

The foundation stone of the church was laid in April 1558. For this purpose, the log church built for Protestant Christians in 1537, the year of the Reformation, was demolished. St. Mary's is the youngest of the three late Gothic hall churches in the Ore Mountains, after St. Wolfgang in Schneeberg and St. Anne's in Annaberg. It was consecrated as the Evangelical Lutheran St. Mary's Church in February 1564. The main building is 45 meters long and 26 meters wide, with three naves of equal height and seven bays. The master builder was Wolf Blechschmidt from Pirna (who significantly influenced the construction of St. Mary's Church in Pirna). The tower halls still display Blechschmidt's late Gothic rib vaulting. Grillenburg sandstone, and perhaps also Postelwitz sandstone, was used as building material. Source: Information panel

With a view of Hüttengrund

View from the Crossroads

In 1561 Marienberg was surrounded by a 2m thick city wall. This had 5 city gates and 4 round corner towers. The Zschopauer Tor is the only remaining city gate that borders the approximately 50m long remainder of the former city wall. At the end of this city wall there is a preserved postal column from 1727.

The Father Abraham mine was mined from 1550 to 1899 and it was the most famous silver mine in the Marienberg district. In 1880, the rare copper sulfoarsenide Lautite was discovered for the first time on the "Amadeus Flachen". This is embedded in solid arsenic as columnar crystal aggregates. In 1893 an extremely large geode with excellent proustite crystals with a length of more than 4 cm was discovered in this silver ore vein. This gland was found on the 1/2 3rd line of gears in the cross passage of the main passage with the hanging strand. From the same vein zone comes not only very heavy nickeline, free lifestone and clausthalite but also plenty of pitchblende, which made the "Abraham" the main mine of the SDAG "Wismut" in the Marienberg mining area from 1947 to 1954. In the years 1969-1976 rich finds of silver dendrites with a length of more than 2 cm, a lot of native arsenic, proustite in small nice crystals, nickel skutterudite in crystals up to 5 mm, ferruginous skutterudite (chathamite), sternbergite in hexagonal crystals of approx. 1 mm in size, argentopyrite, which partly pyrite ized, as well as blue and yellow fluorite. This material is primarily from the Amadeus Shallow Vein. From the mid-1970s, the heap was removed and the material was used as a packing layer in road construction from Marienberg to Zschopau.