Oldenburg (Oldb): Kale, History and Urban Greenery
Accommodation in Oldenburg
Oldenburg (Oldb) combines a lively kale tradition with a distinctive urban history and green routes. Every year, the “Hallo Grünkohl” event turns the city centre into a meeting place for kale fans, and menus feature both classic and modern variations. The city also boasts the Lappan, a landmark and its oldest building, museums with a range of themes, and a circular route through parks and historic neighbourhoods. This lets you plan your stay around a culinary event, culture and a longer tour.
Kale traditions and the history of the Lappan
“Hallo Grünkohl” brings the event to Oldenburg city centre every year. The selection ranges from classic to modern preparations. If you are interested in local food culture, it offers a specific reason to combine your stay with a look around the city.
The Lappan also tells Oldenburg’s story in a small space: it is considered a landmark of Oldenburg, the first church tower and the city’s oldest building. An audio feature about its history, produced in 2018, begins in the Middle Ages, around 1350, when the Lappan was built. It offers a historical introduction to the building, whose significance is reflected in its various names. If you are interested in the city’s history, you can complement this focus with exhibitions and other historic sites.
Palace Gardens and a circular city tour
Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig had the Palace Gardens laid out as an English landscape garden in the early 19th century. The façade of Oldenburg Palace also offers a glimpse into architectural history, with elements from 400 years of European architecture. The garden and palace thus provide different points of interest: the historic design of a garden on the one hand, and the visible traces of different building periods on the other. When planning your stay, you can decide whether to visit individual cultural sites or add a longer circuit through the city.
The 21-kilometre “Green Oldenburg” circular route starts at Schlossplatz and leads through parks and green spaces. Points of interest along the way include views of the water, historic neighbourhoods and architectural highlights. The distance gives you a concrete guide if you want to include an extended tour in your plans. The “Experience Science” route also follows the same path: at eight stops, audio contributions from researchers offer different perspectives on the subject of freedom. In this way, the route combines urban greenery with another, distinctively themed offering. The tour and audio contributions offer different ways to discover Oldenburg.
Art and interpretation in Oldenburg
The permanent exhibition at the Horst Janssen Museum presents the artist’s works in four thematic sections. One particular focus is on providing a hands-on introduction to his techniques. This means that the exhibition explores not only the works themselves, but also Janssen’s working methods. If you are planning a culturally focused stay, you can combine a visit to this museum with the history of the Lappan or the architecture of the palace, while bearing in mind that each place tells a different story.
Another connection to art is the brick building on Schlosswall. Since 1996, it has been used, among other things, for the “Ceramics in the Powder Tower” arts award series. As part of the series, young artists can present their ceramic works at the Oldenburg City Museum. The series complements the museum offering with a look at contemporary ceramic art.
Which priorities suit your accommodation search?
When looking for a holiday apartment in Oldenburg (Oldb), it helps to first decide what you want to focus on during your stay: would you like the city’s history, with the Lappan and palace, to take centre stage; are you particularly interested in art and how it is presented; or would you also like to plan a longer route through green spaces? These themes offer different reasons to explore the destination, without requiring a single accommodation location to be close to all of them. You can search for a holiday apartment in Oldenburg (Oldb) that suits the stay you have planned.
More to discover in the wider Oldenburg destination
The wider Oldenburg destination also offers other landscapes and historical sites. South of Wildeshausen lies the Pestruper Gräberfeld, an archaeological site of national significance set in a landscape of heathland and pine trees. It is also the largest contiguous area of heathland in the district of Oldenburg, with both short and longer walks available. This landscape experience differs from the urban attractions of Oldenburg (Oldb) and offers another way to discover the wider destination.
Hude is also part of this wider destination. Founded in 1232, the Cistercian monastery known as “Portus Sancte Marie” (“Harbour of Saint Mary”) quickly became the spiritual, economic and political centre of the eastern part of the County of Oldenburg. The monastery ruins preserve the remains of a three-aisled basilica with an extended transept; the church was originally over 57 metres long and over 24 metres wide. The museum at Hude Monastery displays models illustrating the building’s history, archaeological finds, maps and texts about the history of the Cistercians, as well as a scriptorium where visitors can try writing with a quill. The wider destination thus offers landscape and monastic history as distinct themes alongside the city’s cultural attractions.
Discover more destinations: Kirchseelte, Harpstedt, Hatten, Kirchhatten, Wildeshausen, Hude, Dötlingen, Ganderkesee.
View the wider travel overview: Oldenburg.
