Where to Stay in Detmold, Nordrhein-Westfalen

What is Detmold known for?

Schloss Detmold stands at the middle of the town that ruled the Principality of Lippe from 1468 until 1918, and the Lippisches Landesmuseum sets out what that principality left behind. The Detmold Open-air Museum is the bigger draw. Two smaller collections do unexpected work as well, the Art Kite Museum and the Museum für russlanddeutsche Kulturgeschichte, and the Schlagzeughaus adds a third.

What are the main landmarks in Detmold?

Schloss Detmold anchors the list. Around it the churches multiply: the Erlöserkirche, which serves the Church of Lippe as the preaching venue of its state superintendent, alongside the Christuskirche, the Versöhnungskirche, the Immanuelkirche and the Diakonissenhauskirche. Dreifaltigkeitskirche, Kirche Heiligenkirchen and the Evangelische Kirche Remmighausen extend the list into the outer quarters.

Museums take the other half, from the Detmold Open-air Museum and the Lippisches Landesmuseum to the Art Kite Museum and the Museum für russlanddeutsche Kulturgeschichte.

What is the history of Detmold?

Lippe ran from here for four and a half centuries. Detmold was the capital of the Principality of Lippe from 1468 until 1918, and Schloss Detmold is the building that made that possible, with the Zehntscheune and the Kornhaus an der Ameide surviving from the economy that supported it. The princes kept a Fasanerie and an estate at Gut Braunenbruch.

The title changed in 1918 without the town losing its function, and the Free State of Lippe kept its capital here until 1947. Administration outlived the monarchy. The Kirche Heiligenkirchen and the Evangelische Kirche Remmighausen belong to villages that sit inside the same city.

The offices are still here. Detmold is the administrative centre of the district of Lippe and of the Regierungsbezirk Detmold, and the Church of Lippe runs its own central administration from the town, with the Erlöserkirche as the preaching venue of its state superintendent. Its museums arrived afterwards.

The Detmold Open-air Museum gathered the building traditions of the region onto one site, the Lippisches Landesmuseum holds the principality's own record, and the Museum für russlanddeutsche Kulturgeschichte keeps the history of the Russian Germans. Lange Straße and the Christuskirche carry the ordinary town through all of it.

Where is Detmold?

Forest sets the frame. Detmold lies in the Teutoburg Forest region, the largest town of the Lippe district, and the wooded ridges reach close enough to the built-up streets that the outer quarters run straight into them. Heiligenkirchen, Remmighausen and Rödlinghausen are the named quarters out at that edge.

The city is the seat of the Regierungsbezirk Detmold within Nordrhein-Westfalen, which gives a town of this size a reach well past its own boundary. Gut Braunenbruch and the Fasanerie lie in the green.

What is the climate of Detmold?

The forest keeps it cooler. Teutoburg Forest ridges hold cloud and rain over Detmold through much of the year, so summers stay short of hot and winters arrive damp rather than severe, with snow more likely on the high ground than in the streets. Autumn is the forest's season.

The Detmold Open-air Museum and the walks around Gut Braunenbruch are worth more in dry months than in wet ones.

How do you get to Detmold?

Roads through the forest do most of it. Detmold sits inside the Lippe district with the Teutoburg Forest around it, so arrivals come across the district on regional links rather than on any main line that runs through the middle of the town. The centre itself needs no transport.

Schloss Detmold, the Lippisches Landesmuseum, the Erlöserkirche and the Lange Straße are all within one walk, while the Detmold Open-air Museum, Heiligenkirchen and Remmighausen want a bus or a car.