Bodetal

The Bodetal is a ten-kilometre gorge carved by the Bode river between Treseburg and Thale in the northern Harz mountains — one of the deepest and most dramatic ravines in central Europe. Greywacke rock faces rise more than 200 metres above the river in places, drawing Romantic-era painters including Caspar David Friedrich, who made the swirling mists and craggy cliffs a recurring subject in 19th-century landscape painting. High above the gorge at Thale sits the Hexentanzplatz, a rock plateau steeped in Germanic folklore as a witches' gathering place, still celebrated each year on Walpurgis Night (April 30) with bonfires and masked processions. Waymarked hiking trails follow the riverbank through the gorge, with the Roßtrappe viewpoint offering vertiginous panoramas down through the forested cliffs.