The best family-friendly hikes and walks around Bad Schlema

The sculpture Stack by the British world artist Tony Cragg in the reconstructed spa park of Bad Schlema embodies the connection between nature and human intervention. The rich mining history is told through the abstract bronze, which evokes associations with broken earth. The sculptor was born in 1949 in Liverpool, Great Britain, and lives today in Wuppertal. https://www.sachsen-tourismus.de/poi/purple-path-stack-von-tony-cragg Size: 380 x 263 x 202 cm

Since mid-March 2014, the Huthaus has housed our restaurant and guesthouse. In our restaurant, we spoil you with hospitality from the Erzgebirge and hearty, regional cuisine. The two beautiful, individually furnished guest rooms invite you to linger and promise a relaxing time in the spa town of Schlema and the surrounding Erzgebirge. Opening hours Mon + Tue: Closed Wed + Thu: 11:30 - 20:00 Fri + Sat: 11:30 - 22:00 Sun + Holiday 11:30 - 20:00 http://www.zumhuthaus.de/wir.htm

With works by renowned international, national, and Saxon artists, the PURPLE PATH art and sculpture trail creates a unique exhibition in public space, connecting Chemnitz with the 38 surrounding towns and municipalities. It is the largest project of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 – and extends into the region. The installations and sculptures are located at significant sites and tell stories of people, craftsmanship, and industry. They invite visitors to discover these story(ies). "Everything comes from the mountain" is the narrative of the PURPLE PATH art and sculpture trail; 850 years of mining have deeply shaped the landscapes around Chemnitz – the Ore Mountains, Central Saxony, the Zwickau region. The extraction of silver, tin, cobalt, iron, kaolin, and uranium has determined life. Since 2019, the Ore Mountains/Krušnohoří Mining Region has been a UNESCO World Heritage site.

located directly on the terrain paths, unfortunately without a resting place

historically valuable and with a miners' restaurant

A wonderful sight in winter when it's nicely frosty.

A very nice corner

The 🟣 PURPLE PATH 🟣 is a sculpture trail that connects Chemnitz, the 2025 Capital of Culture, with 38 towns and cities in the region. Numerous artists have contributed works of various kinds, telling an unknown story of the region. More information at https://chemnitz2025.de/purple-path/ Tony Cragg "Stack" Bad Schlema Spa Park in Aue-Bad Schlema Material: Bronze "The patinated bronze of the abstract sculpture Stack by sculptor Tony Cragg, born in Liverpool, UK in 1949 and living in Wuppertal, evokes natural phenomena such as weathered rocks, polished wood, or volcanic smoke columns. Its layered geometric bodies and forms, repeated, rotated, and expanded into dynamic structures, also evoke ideas of geological models, digital data visualizations, or images from a scanning electron microscope. The iconic stacks, which Cragg has repeatedly modified in his work since the 1970s, have their artistic origins in geometrically stacked relics of industrial society, which are "keys to a bygone era that is our present" (Tony Cragg, 1987). The sculptures of the Turner Prize winner and multiple documenta participant evoke a state between nature and artificiality in a world of "semi-finished products" (Vilém Flusser). Placed in the Bad Schlema spa park, reconstructed after 1990, the 2019 sculpture Stack stands in direct proximity to the former Wismut Shaft 7b, from which uranium ore was mined at a depth of up to 278 meters since 1947. The Soviet-German Wismut AG extracted around 60% of its uranium ore requirements for its bomb production and nuclear power plants such as Chernobyl in the Ore Mountains and Thuringia, and destroyed spa houses, villages, and nature in Bad Schlema itself. Thus, Cragg's "Stack" also recalls this and simultaneously evokes the depiction of the earth's stratification in the Annaberg Mining Altar, created by Hans Hesse in the 16th century. (Text: Alexander Ochs / Ulrike Pennewitz)