Lorettoberg

The Lorettoberg rises above Freiburg’s Wiehre district as a wooded ridge 384 metres high. It separates Unterwiehre-Süd from the Vauban quarter and carries a spur 348 metres up where the Lorettokapelle stands. The name recalls Loreto, Italy’s second-largest Marian pilgrimage site. At the summit the Schloss-Café offers views across the city and Black Forest. A geological fault runs through the mountain and the Höllentalbahn passes beneath it through the Lorettotunnel, where a ‘window’ reveals the shifting rift below.

A memorial tower, the Hildaturm, was built in 1886 in medieval bergfried style for Princess Hilda of Baden. During the Second World War it served as an observation post. Nearby, the Lorettokapelle of 1657 commemorates the 1644 Battle of Freiburg and holds a cannonball that nearly struck Louis XV in 1744. The 1902 Art Nouveau Guesthouse contains the Schloss-Café. Quarries once supplied stone for Freiburg Münster, and clay pits still dot the slopes.

Paths lead from the Loretto Baths up to the chapel, passing the 1887 Chalet Widmer and the Foresthouse education centre. The Way of St James and the Zähringer Trail share the Bergleweg. On the western slope vineyards belong to the state viticulture institute, while villas and the wooden Haus der Bauern occupy the lower ground. A solar house, the Heliotrope, stands on the southwestern foothill.