Binz

Binz developed as a bathing resort from the 1880s and its villas were built in Bäderarchitektur, resort architecture: white painted timber with wide verandas, balconies, decorative fretwork and towers, a style that spread along the whole German Baltic coast and is now protected. The beach runs about five kilometres and a pier of 1994 replaces earlier ones destroyed by ice and storms. Behind the town the Granitz hunting lodge stands on a wooded hill, a nineteenth-century building with a central iron staircase of a hundred and fifty-four steps spiralling up an open shaft to a viewing platform.

Background

Binz is the largest seaside resort on Rügen, in the southeast of the island, lying between Prorer Wiek bay and the Schmachter See lake. North of the town runs the Schmale Heide, a strip of land that links the Muttland region to the Jasmund peninsula. The place first appears in 1318, as Byntze, in a tax record. Around 1830 guests of the Prince of Putbus went bathing where the Ahlbeck reaches the sea, and around 1870 only 80 bathers came in a year. The first hotel went up in 1876, and Wilhelm Klünder's Strandhotel by the beach followed in 1880. The Rügen Light Railway from Putbus arrived in 1895, and a 600-metre pier was built in 1902.

Source: Wikipedia, "Binz"

What's there

• The resort architecture - white timber villas with verandas and fretwork.
• The pier - a 1994 structure replacing earlier ones lost to storms.
• The Granitz lodge - a hunting house with an open iron spiral stair.
• The five-kilometre beach - Rügen's main stretch of sand.

When to go

May to September; July and August are very crowded and expensive. The Granitz lodge is reached by a small tourist train or on foot through the beech woods.

What to expect

Prices and crowds in high summer are steep. The spiral stair at Granitz is open and unnerving for some. The Baltic is cold until midsummer.

Nearby

Sellin lies south-east; Cape Arkona is north.

Key facts