The youngest volcanic maar in the Eifel, framed by a forested tuff wall and a medieval castle ruin.
Ulmener Maar
The Ulmener Maar is a crater lake in the Eifel highlands of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, belonging to the town of Ulmen in the Cochem-Zell district. It is one of the roughly seventy maars that give the Volcanic Eifel its name, and it is regarded as the youngest maar in the field, having formed after the eruption of the nearby Laacher See volcano. The lake itself is a meromictic body of water, reaching depths of about 37 meters, and it sits within a tuff ring built up from the pyroclastic ejecta of the original eruption.
What sets the Ulmener Maar apart from most other Eifel maars is its pairing of a young, ecologically unusual lake with a major medieval ruin. The remains of the Ulmen castles rise on the southern rim of the tuff wall, giving the lake an unusually strong cultural-historical framing. A nearby older maar, the Jungferweiher, has been restored as a waterbody and bird reserve, and the two volcanic features are now linked by a walkable tunnel, the Ulmener Maar Stollen.
Together, the lake, the tuff wall, the castle ruins, and the adjacent Jungferweiher form a compact volcanic landscape that illustrates the geological youth of the western Eifel and its long human history.
