Lime tuff

Tufa building

If you travel by train through the Danube valley, you can discover several buildings made of this special building material along the route. Several railroad stations along the Danube Valley Railway are made of tuff, as are town halls in the area and the Spaichingen town church.

This building material was once widely used in Baden-Württemberg, but most of the deposits are now exhausted.

Tuff or calcareous tuff?

From a geological point of view, tuff is a young stone.
It is formed in similar processes to the stalactites in caves, because the tuff is made of limestone, which is why it is also called calcareous tuff, in contrast to “normal” tuff, which is of volcanic origin.

In its soft, mountain-moist state, lime tuff is very easy to work with, as it is easy to saw and cut to size. The stone then hardens, making it a high-quality building material that is weather-resistant, abrasion-resistant and good for insulation.

Where was the lime tuff mined?

Where exactly does this special building material, which looks so different from the walls in the region made of “ordinary” limestone, occur?

Tuff deposits can still be seen in the Bäratal valley near Bärenthal. There was originally a large tufa quarry there.
Tufa mining played a very important economic role here. In the 1930s, the Bärenthal construction company Beck employed more than 30 workers who quarried and prepared tuff.

Town hall in Bärenthal

Tufa cascades Bärenthal