Forchheimer Keller

Forchheim Cellars


Useful Information

Location: Forchheim
Open: all year daily
Fee: none, except for the beer... ;-)
Classification: Beer cellars
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Address: Tourist-Info Forchheim, Im Rathaus, 91301 Forchheim, Tel: +49-9191-714-338, Fax: +49-9191-714-206. E-mail: contact
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then.
Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

28-FEB-1446 Annafest first mentioned.
1722 42 owener of cellars mentioned, most of them landlords, cask makers and brewers.
1801 Joh. Baptist Roppelt talks about 31 cellars in his book "Historisch topographischen Beschreibung des Hochstifts und Fürstentums Bamberg".
1840 the Königlich Privilegierte Hauptschützengesellschaft (Royal Priviledged Shooting Society) moved to the cellars.

Description

The cellars of Forchheim are well known and famous for their coziness and the excellent beers. When you first arrive you will see a light forest on a mountainside with numerous small pubs in wooden huts. The visitors sit mostly under the trees on wooden benches, so it is very popular during hot summer days.

But this website is dedicated to subterranean sights, not pubs. And we have a very strong connection to a special subterranea, which is even mentioned in the name: all those pubs are based on a beer cellar. The steep slope of the mountain was used by the breweries of Forchheim, to build horizontal cellars, which could be enterd with wheelbarrow and carts.

A long time ago, the tradition started, to sell the beer directly from the cellar on special feasts. The owners of the cellars just put a counter in front of the cellar entrance and sold their beer. Wooden benches around the cellar seated their guests. And this tradition lives until today: once a year, at the end of July, the Annafest takes place here. It is the biggest festival of Frochheim, well known and well visited, and all of the cellars are open at this time. Most of the cellars are open the whole summer and some of them the whole year. Especially those with a wooden hut and an oven.

The cellars were built into the Dogger sandstone. But they are not open to the public. The cellars which are open all the year have a hut built on top of the entrance. But the cellars, which open only for the Annafest, look original: a sandstone arch with a wooden door in the mountainside. Those doors can be found all over the area, which gives a good idea of the number and diversity of the cellars.