Celtic World at the Glauberg

He carries a sword, a shield and a neck ring, and on his head sits a strange cap that looks like two large leaves. The Celtic Prince of the Glauberg is an almost complete stone figure from the 5th century BC and is considered the most important find of the Celtic La Tène culture in Hesse. At the Celtic World at the Glauberg the original stands only a few metres from where it was found, and through the museum's glass front you look straight at the burial mound it belonged to.

History: a burial mound in a cornfield

The Glauberg is a flat basalt ridge in the Wetterau region, settled from the Neolithic to the High Middle Ages. Before the Romans it carried a fortified Celtic hilltop settlement. In the late 1980s local historians on a survey flight spotted traces of a huge, long-levelled burial mound in a cornfield on the southern slope. Excavations from 1994 to 1997 uncovered richly furnished graves of Celtic warriors from the late 5th century BC, including a gold neck ring and a Celtic beaked flagon.

The real sensation came to light on 24 June 1996: the statue, carved from local reddish sandstone and recovered from the ditch around the mound. The museum opened on 5 May 2011. Since December 2023 the early Celtic princely seat has been on Germany's tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage, together with the Heuneburg.

What to see

• The Celtic Prince: 1.86 m tall and weighing 230 kg, with only the feet missing. The figure's jewellery and weapons closely match the grave goods in Grave 1. The headgear is interpreted as a crown of mistletoe leaves; since mistletoe had ritual meaning for the Celts, the dead man may also have been a kind of priest.
• Fragments of more statues: Parts of three further figures were found, similar in detail to the first but with different proportions.
• The burial mound: It has been rebuilt on its original site, together with the ditch-lined “processional way” leading up to it.
• The row of posts: At the foot of the mound, wooden posts mark the position of 16 post holes. Whether they formed a calendar is disputed; more recent views see them as structures with various purposes.
• The museum: The cube clad in rust-red steel plates projects far over a glazed café. From the roof you have a wide view over the mound and the Wetterau.

The archaeological park

Around the museum lies a 37-hectare site. It includes the plateau on top of the Glauberg, where the Celtic settlement and later a medieval town stood. An archaeological and cultural trail explains the ramparts and walls; you can still see, for example, the ground floor of a Staufer-era tower with a Romanesque archway from the 12th or 13th century.

Good to know

Even the experts are careful with the title “prince”: it mainly underlines the importance of the find, and the man's role in life can only be guessed at. Full-size copies of the statue stand in the local museum in Glauburg and in the Wetterau Museum in Friedberg. The Celtic World is one of Hesse's state archaeological museums; the other, the Saalburg near Bad Homburg, covers the Roman period and makes a good pairing for a themed weekend.

Visiting and timing

Allow about an hour and a half for the exhibition, or three to four hours with the burial mound and the loop over the plateau. Sturdy shoes help on the path up the hill. The museum is run by the state of Hesse with its own opening hours and changing special exhibitions, so check current times on the Celtic World's website before you go. The Glauberg lies in the municipality of Glauburg in the Wetterau district, a little over 30 km north-east of Frankfurt.