Rock gate in the Uttewalder Grund

The Uttewalder Felsentor is located in the upper section of the Uttewalder Grund. It was formed by fallen sandstone blocks that have wedged themselves into a narrow gorge. 
The Uttewalder Grund gorge leads through a wild and romantic section of the Elbe Sandstone Mountains directly through the Saxon Switzerland National Park. The path is shady, with moss-covered walls and is particularly pleasant in hot weather.

The Uttewalder Felsentor is particularly suitable as a photo spot at lunchtime, when sunlight falls into the ground and impressively illuminates the rock gate and the moss- and fern-covered gorge.

The site is one of the earliest documented tourist destinations in the region. The Felsentor was already a popular excursion destination in the 19th century.

Caspar David Friedrich was also inspired by this landscape and used motifs from it in several of his works. In the summer of 1800, when the painter was 25 years old, he lived here for a whole week, "between rocks and fir trees", as he later reported to a friend. He did not meet a soul. In 1825, he turned this intense experience into his sombre oil painting "Uttewalder Grund".

The sensation of nature as a source of knowledge: this was a defining theme for the painter throughout his life. Time and again, he sought solitude and silence, not just to see nature and the landscape, but to immerse himself in them, to feel them. "I must surrender to what surrounds me, unite myself with my clouds and the rocks in order to be what I am," he writes.