Berchtesgaden National Park

Listen for a moment. Up here the air is cool, even in summer, and it carries the smell of spruce resin and damp limestone. Somewhere below, water is running over stone. Somewhere above, a bird circles in silence. Around you, grey and white cliffs rise straight out of dark forest. Welcome to Berchtesgaden National Park, in the far southeastern corner of Germany, where the country presses up against Austria.

This park holds a special place on the map. It is the only national park in Germany set in the high Alps. It was founded in 1978, and it protects an area of roughly two hundred square kilometres. That is mountain, forest, meadow and lake. Almost all of the park lies in a deep pocket of land. Austrian territory surrounds it on three sides, so the borders follow ridges and summits.

If you are standing on the slopes of Obersalzberg, you are just outside the park itself. The protected area begins to the south. Obersalzberg sits on a sunny shelf above the town of Berchtesgaden, and from here you look across to the great limestone massifs. Obersalzberg also carries a much darker layer of history. In the 1930s and 1940s, leaders of the Nazi regime built residences here. Today a documentation centre on the mountain explains that history plainly.

Now turn your eyes to the largest mountain on the horizon. That is the Watzmann. Its main summit stands 2,713 metres high, and its long east face drops toward the Königssee in one of the tallest rock walls in the Eastern Alps. Climbers know this face well. It is long, serious, and it has claimed many lives. From a distance, though, it looks calm — a broad, pale shoulder with two peaks.

The Watzmann has a story attached to it. Legend has it that a cruel king once ruled this valley. He and his family hunted without mercy and trampled the farmers' fields. As punishment, the story says, they were all turned to stone. The king became the Watzmann. His wife became the peak locals call the Watzmannfrau. And the small summits between them? Those are said to be their children. Look closely, and you can pick them out.

Below the Watzmann lies the Königssee, the King's Lake. It is long, narrow and very deep, and it fills a valley that glaciers carved during the last ice age. The water is famously clean and clear, with a deep green colour. Here is a detail many visitors miss. The passenger boats on this lake run on electric power, and they have done so for more than a century. That keeps the water quiet and free of fuel.

The quiet matters for another reason. Partway along the lake, the boat usually stops beside a steep cliff. A crew member lifts a flugelhorn — a brass instrument a little like a trumpet — and plays a short tune. Then everyone waits. A moment later the melody comes back from the rock walls, once, twice, sometimes more. It is a simple trick of sound and stone, and it never fails to bring silence to a full boat.

On a flat green peninsula on the western shore stands the pilgrimage church of Saint Bartholomew. You will know it at once. Its walls are white, and its domes are rounded and red, shaped like onions. Behind it the Watzmann's east face rises almost straight up. For centuries pilgrims came here by boat. Each year, local people still row across the lake on Saint Bartholomew's feast day in late August, carrying a long tradition onto the water.

From the church, a path leads up toward the Eiskapelle, the Ice Chapel. This is a field of old snow and ice at the foot of the Watzmann. Avalanches feed it every winter, and in summer, meltwater can hollow out a cave inside. It is beautiful, but it is also dangerous. Ice can collapse without warning, so never walk inside or underneath it. Admire it from the outside, where the cold air flows out over the stones.

At the far end of the Königssee, a short walk brings you to a second, smaller lake called the Obersee. There are no boats here, and often no wind. On a still morning the water holds a perfect mirror of the cliffs. Beyond it, a thin white line runs down the rock. That is the Röthbach waterfall, often described as the highest waterfall in Germany. In early summer, with snow melting above, you can hear it long before you reach it.

The park is not only rock and water. It is also alive. Chamois — small, agile wild goats — move across the steep slopes. Higher up, alpine ibex with long curved horns rest on the ledges. In the meadows you may hear a sharp whistle. That is a marmot, a stocky burrowing rodent, warning its family that you are near. And if you are patient, you might see a golden eagle riding the warm air above the ridges.

The rule of this park is simple: let nature run its own course. In large parts of the forest, fallen trees stay where they fall. Beetles, fungi and moss slowly turn them back into soil, and young trees grow through the gaps. To some eyes it looks untidy. To ecologists it is the point. The wider region is also part of a UNESCO biosphere reserve, where people and landscape are meant to live side by side.

If you want to understand the park before you go deeper, visit the Haus der Berge, the House of the Mountains, in the town of Berchtesgaden. Its exhibition follows the landscape from the lake to the summits. Below the mountains there is another story too. Salt has been mined in this valley for centuries, and that salt once made Berchtesgaden rich. The mountains you see were wealth long before they were scenery.

So take one more look. Find the Watzmann and its children. Follow the line of forest down to where the lake must be, hidden in its valley. Listen again for the water, the wind in the spruce, perhaps a cowbell from a high pasture. As you walk on, notice how the light changes on the limestone — grey at noon, warm gold late in the day. The mountains will still be here tomorrow. For now, they are yours.