1644 Dark Times

The horrors of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), a great city fire (1633), the plague (1637) and the "Little Ice Age" with poor harvests and famine almost completely destroyed the medieval city of Lychen. In 1644, only 17 houses were still habitable; a large part of the town's inhabitants had died or fled.

This storage room under the street house of the Sommerfrische survived the dark times. According to the Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments, the cellar is probably the remains of the foundations of an earlier building - just one of the many that were stolen by the flames during the first major town fire.

If walls could speak... which people may have stored their supplies here over the centuries in autumn, always hoping that it would be enough to get the family through the winter?