Cellar 2 beneath East Wing @museum.de

This second cellar under the east wing also dates to the early 19th century and was built by Lucas Faesch. Like the previous room, it has two windows on to the inner courtyard. The two windows on the opposite side, the left, had to be blocked off when a house was built on the neighbouring property.

The brick floor is new... and old. Until a few years ago, there was a rammed earth floor in here, too. But the bricks used in here are old: they date from around 1860 and were recovered during the removal of some of the interior walls. Their re-use in here is entirely in keeping with the thinking behind the refurbishment, which relied as much as possible on recycling old materials.

The mansion’s present owners use this cool, spacious cellar to store both wine and the cut flowers that are arranged into fancy bouquets to decorate the holiday apartments.

The door at the end of this room has been newly added. It leads into the next cellar, but originally secured a large vaulted cellar used as an air-raid shelter. It still bears the instruction: "Türe zu" – Shut the Door – written in chalk. As to whether those narrow boards would have actually withstood a blast wave – is doubtful. Fortunately, they were never called on to demonstrate their robustness!