Worpswede Artists' Colony

Worpswede sits about 26 km north of Bremen on the edge of the Teufelsmoor peat-bog, reached by a regional train from Bremen Hauptbahnhof to Osterholz-Scharmbeck (about 20 minutes) followed by bus line 670 into the village (another 20 minutes), or by car via the B6 and L154 in roughly 35-40 minutes. The village became an artists' colony in the 1880s when painters including Paula Modersohn-Becker, Heinrich Vogeler, and Fritz Mackensen settled here to paint the flat moorland light, and its hilly Bergstrasse is still lined with galleries, studios, and the domed Grosse Kunstschau exhibition hall. Vogeler's Art Nouveau estate, the Barkenhoff, is open as a museum and gives the clearest sense of the colony's aesthetic. A typical day starts with the Barkenhoff and Grosse Kunstschau in the morning, breaks for lunch at one of the thatched-roof cafes along Bergstrasse, and continues in the afternoon with a walk or a flat-bottomed peat-barge punt trip along the Hamme-Kanal through the surrounding moor. The village is at its best between April and October, when the barges run and the moorland is green; a mid-morning arrival avoids the coach-tour groups that tend to fill the galleries after midday in peak summer.