View across Elbauenpark

The levels below you trace 6,000 years of the history of science and technology. From up here, a little over 40 metres above the ground, you can see the Elbe, the city of Magdeburg and, on the far bank, its cathedral. When visibility is good, the view reaches as far as the 1,141-metre Brocken in the Harz mountains.

The park grounds, known as the Cracauer Anger, were first recorded as meadowland in 1309. From the middle of the 19th century the Prussian army used the area for military training. After the war, rubble from the city centre, destroyed on 16 January 1945, was brought to the Kleiner Cracauer Anger, almost a million cubic metres by the end of 1949. Soviet troops were stationed on the site until the early 1990s.

Before the park could take shape, countless shells and other munitions had to be cleared. The wartime rubble was worked into the design of the park. Among the largest single projects were the Seebühne, an open-air stage surrounded by water, the clean-up of a landfill site and the 60-metre Millennium Tower. The tower is built of glued laminated timber and stands between the Elbe and the Angersee lake. In 1999 Germany's Federal Garden Show was held here on 93 hectares. Since 2000 the grounds have been known as Elbauenpark.