A river-laced lowland of marshes, meadows and pine woods southwest of Berlin.
Naturpark Nuthe-Nieplitz
Naturpark Nuthe-Nieplitz is one of eleven nature parks in the German state of Brandenburg, lying southwest of Berlin and south of Potsdam between the Fläming, Teltow and Zauche landscape regions. The park covers a broad area of gently undulating sand plains broken by two glacial valleys, the Baruther Urstromtal and the Nuthe-Urstromtal, through which the rivers Nuthe and Nieplitz wind and merge. The name-giving rivers shape the central landscape of wet meadows, shallow fens, slow-flowing channels and reed-bordered lakes, while pine-covered hill ridges such as the Glauer Berge and the Löwendorfer Berg rise quietly above the flat ground.
Beyond its scenery, the park is known for an unusually intensive tradition of conservation. It contains six nature reserves, a large landscape protection area that covers much of the park, a European bird protection area focused on the Nuthe-Nieplitz lowland, and former military training grounds that have been deliberately left to develop into wild, species-rich land. Visitors come for quiet rural villages with old half-timbered farmhouses, manor houses such as Schloss Blankensee, observation towers for cranes and geese, and a network of walking and cycling routes threading through marshland, orchard meadows and pine forest.
The park reflects a wider German approach to nature parks: protection and use connected, with active rewetting of former farmland, the reopening of canals and the gradual re-establishment of wetlands. It is a landscape shaped as much by centuries of drainage as by modern efforts to undo that drainage, giving it a distinctive identity among Brandenburg's protected areas.
