Wörth am Main ⋅ One of the most unusual museums in Germany recently celebrated its 30th anniversary: ​​the Maritime Museum in Wörth in Lower Franconia.

Of course, the subject alone could not justify this reputation.

It is the setting and the presentation that give the special collection its unique aura.

The more than 100 ship models, tools, old photographs and maps are housed in a baroque church profaned in 1903.

Thanks to the rededication, the church, which had been empty for a long time, was saved from decay.

Inside the Wolfgangskirche, consecrated in 1748, there are large glass showcases instead of an altar, pulpit and pews.

And where the organ once played, you can feel like a captain on the bridge.

Either you have to take a seat in the command post of a motor ship, or you turn the wooden steering wheel of one of the historic boats.

The flat hulls of these are striking.

Before the regulation that began in 1820 and the 34 locks made navigable, the Main was a sluggish journeyman who only allowed a meter of water under the keel, after a drought hardly that. Then it was lighter or waiting for rising water levels.

But every increase was enough to flood entire towns, as shown by the water level marks at an alarming height on the half-timbered town hall in Wörth.

The damage caused mainly by ice during the severe flood in the winter of 1882/83 prompted the community to rebuild large parts above, including a neo-Romanesque church that corresponded to the taste of the time.

The Main was both a curse and a blessing.

Ports and shipyards were built, and trade brought prosperity.

Shipping and boat building employed every third inhabitant of Wörth.

After 1918, due to a lack of space, the largest shipyard even had to move to Erlenbach on the right-hand side of the Main, where ships are still overhauled today, clearly visible from the Wörther Ufer.

Directions

Wörth train station is in the newer part (with a large car park).

If you don't get on the left with the yellow cross sign, you go on Luxburgstraße past the sandstone-red parish church and on through Rathausstraße to the Maritime Museum in the former Wolfgangskirche, continue left along the half-timbered row to the magnificent half-timbered town hall.

From here it is only a few meters to the Mainland, which is entered through one of the protective gates.

Behind it, you turn left to the park-like shore zone.

With a view of the Erlenbach shipyard and the Gothic-modern parish church, you promenade downstream, accompanied by meadow-like vegetation.

When the paved path turns left a good kilometer later, follow it straight ahead over a small road towards the main road.

But the dam is not to be crossed here, but only after a few steps to the left of it.

On the other side, turn left 200 meters to the country road, on the left side of which runs a footpath marked with a yellow cross.

Even before Seckmauern he changes over and leads halfway up the slope to the left.

At the top left it goes briefly into the forest and when you exit again turn right.