In the Middle Ages, pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela followed the Milky Way’s fine star trail in the night sky. The European model project “Starry Path/Chemin des étoiles” symbolically refers to this cosmic “signpost” of our ancestors and sees itself in the present as a large regional contribution to the careful valorization of the paths of the pilgrims of St. James in parts of Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate, Lorraine and Alsace.
On their pilgrimages “to the end of the world” countless people created a network of paths that shaped the cultural-historical roots of Europe. Explore the lines of movement of these pilgrims and sense the special spirituality that nourished their strength and inspiration and that reverberates in the medieval building culture along the way to the present day.
The model project aims to symbolically scatter a “trail of stars” along the pilgrims’ routes in the project area with more than 350 visible examples of medieval building culture, which people can follow in their own individual way. This search for traces involuntarily emphasizes the special facets of the passing European cultural landscapes and the more than 1000-year-old culture of being on the road in the spirit of a pilgrimage.
On the interactive map the individual medieval cultural monuments are shown with a red dot. When you click on it, you will get the GPS position in a small window, a short art-historical information about the respective object with the medieval reference, under “i” the tourist contact person as well as, if applicable, the hint how many kilometers the medieval monument is located on foot off the officially marked paths.