In 1521 Duke Heinrich of Saxony founded a new town in the Ore Mountains to house miners drawn by recent silver strikes, and he had it laid out on a regular grid around a huge square market place, following Renaissance ideas of the ideal city. Marienberg is the result, and its plan is still clearly visible, with straight streets, the town church, the Zschopau gate and a stretch of town wall. The town is part of the Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mining Region, the cross-border World Heritage Site inscribed in 2019, which recognises eight hundred years of mining in these mountains.
Mining shaped every aspect of life here, from the landscape, dotted with spoil heaps, shafts and ponds, to the culture. The miners' traditions, with their parades in dark uniforms and the greeting Glück auf, are still kept alive, and the Ore Mountains are famous for their wooden Christmas decorations: nutcrackers, smoking men, candle arches called Schwibbögen, and pyramids turned by the heat of candles, all born from miners' longing for light during the dark winters underground. Nearby Pobershau has a visitor mine and the dramatic rocks of the Black Pockau valley.
For riders, the Ore Mountains offer some of the best roads in eastern Germany, winding through forests and over the ridge between Saxony and Bohemia, with long views and little traffic. The roads around Marienberg are well surfaced and varied, with climbs, descents and curves, and the border crossings into the Czech Republic lead to even quieter roads on the other side. Winters are long and snowy, and the riding season runs from late spring to autumn.
Marienberg is a town of fourteen thousand people, so fuel, a supermarket and a bed are easy to find, and the huge market square, one of the largest in Saxony, has cafés with outdoor tables in summer. Try Buttermilchgetzen, a potato and buttermilk bake, or a plate of Klöße with roast meat. In December the Christmas markets and miners' parades are magical, with brass bands and candlelight, but roads can then be icy. The visitor mine at Pobershau and the Pferdegöpel, a reconstructed horse-powered winding engine, give a vivid sense of the work underground.