Oldenburg audiotours

Oldenburg was first documented in 1108, when Count Elimar I held a ford on the Hunte River and the settlement that grew around it took his name. The counts of Oldenburg became kings of Denmark, then Norway, then Sweden, then Greece, across various dynastic complications over six centuries. The town itself, meanwhile, grew into a compact capital of a small state and accumulated the civic buildings that role requires: the Schloss, now a regional museum with a particularly good art collection, and the Staatstheater on Theaterwall, operating since 1833.

The Kramermarkt, the city's annual autumn fair, dates to the seventeenth century and runs for ten days in October.

The Schlossgarten, the formal garden behind the palace, is open year-round and is used by locals with a frequency that suggests they think of it as their own garden, which in some sense it is. St Lamberti Church, its tower visible from across the low flat country that surrounds Oldenburg, is the seat of the regional Lutheran church. The surrounding landscape is dairy country: eighty percent grassland, flat, and producing milk that goes into the northern German butter and cheese supply.