Charlottensee

Charlottensee
	The Charlottensee with an artificially created event island at the foot of the castle hill
Geographical location	Lower Saxony
	Data
Coordinates	52 ° 9 '32 " N , 8 ° 2' 24" E Coordinates: 52 ° 9 '32 " N , 8 ° 2' 24" E
surface	1.55 ha
particularities	Artificial castle pond

The Charlottensee is an artificial pond in the spa gardens of Bad Iburg , Osnabrück district , Lower Saxony .

The initiator for the construction of the lake below Iburg Castle was the Iburger Kurverein founded in June 1932. The lake was created from 1932 to 1933 by the " Voluntary Labor Service ".

At the place of today's lake there used to be the mill pond of the castle mill, which dammed the Kolbach, a source brook of the Glane . The mill pond became swampy after the mill was no longer operated with water power from 1900. At the mill pond, Prince-Bishop Philipp Sigismund von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel had a water mill built, which is now known as the castle mill and is used for gastronomic purposes.

The Charlottensee has an area of 1.55 hectares. Construction began on May 15, 1932; 120 labor service workers performed 5,500 daily jobs and moved around 10,000 cubic meters of earth. On June 18, 1933, the lake was opened to the public and named after the future Prussian Queen Sophie Charlotte , who was born in 1668 in Iburg Castle . From 1948 to the late 1960s, the students at the Lower Saxony home school in Iburg ran around the lake in the morning during their first major school break as part of their morning run. During this time, the students were obliged to do gymnastic exercises in the Ulmenhof of Iburg Castle .

Boats are rented out on the lake in the gardens below Bad Iburg Castle. The section of the federal highway 51 leading around the Charlottensee was formerly called the Rennbahn. The street was renamed Charlottenburger Ring.

In 1992 an event island was created in the lake and the northeast area of the site was redesigned. In 2013 the Schlosswiese, which had been laid out as a sports field by students from the Lower Saxony Home School Iburg after the Second World War , was redesigned and added to the park area at the Charlottensee.

The lake is popular with ice skaters because it freezes over easily due to its shallow depth and breaking through the ice layer does not pose a direct threat to the life of adult skaters.

Picture gallery

Part of the Charlottensee with a view of the castle mill extension
The castle mill, built by Prince-Bishop Philipp Sigismund von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel