On your left, look for a half-open, dome-like tent made of curved metal ribs and translucent, stained-glass-colored panels, sitting under leafy trees like a modern pavilion in a small square.
This is Bamberg’s Tent of Religions, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: a shared meeting place for Jews, Christians, and Muslims… in the form of a tent. Not a church borrowing a corner for an “interfaith night,” not a sterile conference room with bad coffee, but a space designed from the start to belong to all three. That’s the point here: nobody’s a guest, nobody’s the host, and nobody has to pretend beige walls are “neutral.” Beige walls have started wars of their own.
The structure is cleverly symbolic. See how the shell is made of three equal, petal-like sections that interlock into one bud? Each “petal” represents one of the three religions, and it’s built from a metal frame covered with a special tarp-like skin. It’s art, architecture, and engineering having a surprisingly productive group project. The design came from two Bamberg graphic artists, Bernhard Kümmelmann and Christine Kaufmann, with the technical planning handled by KTA Kiefer and the construction carried out by Prebeck.
Step closer and the visuals get more specific. One panel carries Hebrew text on a deep blue field, opening with the beginning of Genesis: “In the beginning…” Alongside it is the gold seven-branched menorah, a symbol tied to the Torah and the ancient Temple in Jerusalem-still iconic long after the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE.
Another panel is Christian: a purple-red background with an excerpt inspired by the Bamberg Apocalypse, a famous manuscript made around the year 1000 on Reichenau Island. Emperor Henry II and Empress Kunigunde gifted it to St. Stephen’s here in Bamberg-because when you’re an emperor, you don’t bring a bottle of wine, you bring a masterpiece. Above the text: the cross, plus Alpha and Omega, pointing to Christ as beginning and completion.
The third petal is Islamic, using Arabic calligraphy-because imagery is traditionally avoided-quoting a saying of the Prophet Muhammad: “Allah is beautiful and loves beauty,” set against golden tones that nod to mosque domes.
This tent began as the centerpiece of Bamberg’s 2012 State Garden Show, in a “Garden of God” project built around shared ideas of paradise and hospitality-roots that reach back to the nomadic traditions of all three faiths. During that summer, nearly 600 events happened inside: prayers, talks, dialogues, real conversations. When the garden show ended, the tent had to come down and went into storage… until locals pushed to bring it back. A nonprofit formed in 2013, and in 2014 the tent was re-raised right here on Markusplatz, where it still hosts events-often from April to October.
In 2017, the group behind it even received a Bavarian state parliament citizens’ prize for civic engagement and respectful dialogue. Which is a very official way of saying: “Nice work, humans.”
Ready for Bamberg State Library? Just walk southeast for about 9 minutes.
