Nuremberg's historic rock-cut cellars

Southern Germany's biggest rock-cut cellar maze at the foot of the castle

In the year 1380, Nuremberg's rock-cut cellars were mentioned for the first time in a document defining a building law. It said that everybody who was brewing beer in his house had to have a cellar „zehen schuch tieff und sechzehen schuch weit...“ (i. e. “ten feet deep and sixteen feet wide“). For centuries after, the cellars were used to store beer.

The red sandstone into which the citizens cut their cellars in the following centuries turned out to be very stable. Thanks to the clever construction of pillars standing perfectly above each other, the maze-like cellar-vaults even stood firm against the bombs of the Second World War. Thousands of Nuremberg's citizens came here for shelter and thus survived the inferno that came upon the city on January, 2nd 1945.

Today, the rock-cut cellars are again partly used to ripen and store the specialty beers and beer schnaps made by the “Hausbrauerei Altstadthof“.