St Martin's Chapel, Chapel in Furtwangen im Schwarzwald, Germany.
St Martin's Chapel is a small roadside chapel set in the upper Katzensteig valley in the Black Forest, close to Furtwangen im Schwarzwald. The plain stone building stands amid highland conifer forest, near the headwaters of the Danube.
Excavations in 1958 uncovered remains of a religious structure dating to around 800 AD, likely a spring shrine with a baptismal basin. The current building is more recent, but it stands on the same ground as that early medieval site.
The chapel is named after Saint Martin, a 4th-century bishop whose memory is still marked each November with lantern processions across southwest Germany. Hikers often stop here briefly, and small outdoor services are occasionally held at the site.
The chapel sits along two popular routes, the West Way hiking trail and the long-distance ski trail between Schonach and Belchen, making it easy to reach on foot or on skis in winter. No special preparation is needed, and a short stop fits naturally into a longer outing in the area.
The chapel stands on the European watershed, the line where rainwater splits and drains either toward the Rhine or toward the Danube. A few steps apart, water flows in opposite directions, one toward the North Sea and the other toward the Black Sea.
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