Freiburg Bächle

The Freiburg Bächle are small water-filled runnels or formalized rills in the Black Forest city of Freiburg. They are supplied with water by the Dreisam and can be seen along most streets and alleyways in the old city, being one of the city's most famous landmarks. The word Bächle comes from the German Bach, meaning stream, with the Alemannic diminutive ending -le.

First documented in the 13th century, the Bächle once served as a water supply and were used to help fight fires. Today the Bächle are loved by children and tourists alike but in the 19th century they were seen as obsolete and most of them were covered with iron plates. The Bächle were seen by many (among them the ADAC) as a traffic hazard due to their original location in the middle of the road and as a consequence they were moved to the edge of the roads in 1852.

It is local superstition that if you accidentally step in the Bächle, you will marry a Freiburger.

The first documented mention of the Bächle dates back to the year 1220 when Count Egon I of Freiburg gave the Tennenbacherhof monastery permission to use a field which was irrigated by a Bächle. Another reference to the Bächle can be found in a document from the year 1238, according to which the Dominicans built a monastery adjoining the city wall inter duas ripas (Lat: between two (river)banks).

Several archaeologists deduce from the outcome of excavations that the Bächle had already been in existence in 1120 when Freiburg was founded, some one-hundred years earlier than documented. The city of Freiburg was founded on the site of a previous settlement at the foot of the Schlossberg. The construction of artificial water courses, used to irrigate pastureland, was convenient because of the natural slope on which the settlement was built.

Around the year 1180 some street levels in the city were raised by up to three metres with layers of gravel. Unlike in many other settlements this was not done to protect against floods since the riverbed of the Dreisam is significantly lower than the city. It is now believed that the entire system of Bächle was instead elevated in order to supply newer parts of the city with water. Thus, houses from the first half of the twelfth century are in line with a lower street level and all constructions after 1175 with a higher one. Those aggradations made the ground floor of a lot of houses impassable from the street, so that they were either raised or simply had front doors built at the level of their upper floors - which were then at street level. The amount of newly constructed buildings around 1175 thus surpassing the number expected by natural population growth, presumably also because the aggradations were used to substitute wooden constructions with stone ones.

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Wikipedia