Germany · Nordrhein-Westfalen · Münster
Roxel, Münster — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Roxel is a Stadtteil in the Stadtbezirk West of Münster, first recorded in 1177 as curia Rukeslare, the A1 motorway dividing it from Altenroxel.
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Where to stay in Roxel
Where the beds are, and what that means for the visit.
The motorway is the dividing line. Roxel lies west of the A1 and Altenroxel east of it, and the Stadtteil as a whole runs to almost twenty square kilometres, which makes it more village and farmland than suburb even though Münster is close. Other places press on every side.
Nienberge sits north, Gievenbeck and Sentrup east, Mecklenbeck and Albachten south, and the Kreis Coesfeld begins at the western boundary. A room here is a room in the country.
About Roxel
What are the main landmarks in Roxel?
Burg Hülshoff is the name that carries. The Droste zu Hülshoff family seated there gave Münster mayors, councillors and cathedral canons from the Middle Ages on, and the poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff made the house famous well beyond Westphalia. Other houses ring the old village.
Haus Brock held the Steveninck and the Kerckerinck at different times, Markenbeck has been the Schenckinck seat since 1351, and the knights von Schonebeck held the Bauerschaft of the same name. Roxel served as a court place. Landtage were held here more than once, and the name itself, Rokeslare from rôk for raven or crow and the old ending lare for a clearing, fits a raven clearing that did duty as a place of judgement.
What is the history of Roxel?
The name is older than the record. Rokeslare appears in writing in 1177 as curia Rukeslare, a farmstead with what the word curia suggests was an administrative and legal function, and the settlement it names is a good deal older than that first mention. Two readings of the ending compete.
Heinrich Dittmeyer took lar as a fenced enclosure for breeding stock, while Jürgen Udolph holds it to be an ancient Germanic settlement word whose meaning can no longer be fixed, closer to Joseph Schnetz and his reading as pasture. Altenroxel is younger than its name. It began as a Drubbel settlement west of the Münstersche Aa around the start of the 11th century, at roughly the same time as the neighbouring Bauerschaft of Mecklenbeck to the south.
Sieges brought the outside world in. The bishop's knights camped 222 horsemen here in 1534 during the Münster Anabaptist rising, Christoph Bernhard von Galen seized Burg Hülshoff, Wilkinghege and Brock in 1660 for his third siege of the city, and the Prussian Landkreis Münster was run from Burg Hülshoff between 1864 and 1874.
Where is Roxel?
Roxel takes in almost twenty square kilometres of the Stadtbezirk West of Münster, split by the A1 into Roxel to the west and Altenroxel to the east, with Nienberge north, Gievenbeck and Sentrup east, Mecklenbeck and Albachten south and the Kreis Coesfeld west.
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Another area in Münster
Updated September 2026