Grube Anna

Grube Fischbach

Grube Mühlenbach

Grube Roter Bär

Marienglashöhle

The mine regions are hearty and industrial-heritage: the Harz serves game and the famous Harzer cheese, the Saarland blends French and German fare with quetsche plum dishes, and Aachen adds its Printen gingerbread. Everywhere you find pork, potatoes and strong regional beer to refuel after a cold, demanding mine dive in the German hinterland.

Hotel Mühlenbach

Hotel Fischbach

Hotel Roter Bär

Hotel Anna Aachen

Hotel Marienglashöhle

Germany’s flooded mines offer a uniquely industrial and historic form of overhead-environment diving, where disused lead, silver and slate mines have filled with clear, cold water to create eerie underwater galleries. Grube Mühlenbach in Saxony-Anhalt and Grube Roter Bär in the Harz are guided mine dives through tunnels and past spectacular stalactites, while Grube Fischbach in the Saarland and Grube Anna near Aachen reveal impressive flooded ore galleries. The Marienglashöhle in Thuringia adds a crystal-grotto of gypsum, its lower levels flooded for guided cave dives. These are advanced, drysuit, often full-overhead sites with strict access and permits, but they reward the well-qualified with an atmosphere found nowhere else in recreational diving — a silent, submerged industrial cathedral.

Flooded Mines & Caverns

Fly into Leipzig, Hannover or Frankfurt and drive to the mine sites, which are scattered from the Harz to the Saarland and Thuringia. All flooded-mine dives are guided and permit-only, organised through specialised mine-dive centres; there is no independent shore access.

Dive Sites in Flooded Mines & Caverns

Grube Anna

Grube Fischbach

Grube Mühlenbach

Grube Roter Bär

Marienglashöhle