Überlingen
— — the lake the Alps lean against.
Not only on a wall.
“A medieval town on the German side of the Bodensee, where the lake widens into the Überlinger See. Half-timbered houses, a Gothic minster of sandstone the colour of weak tea, and a long promenade that catches the alpine light bouncing off the water. In summer the lake reads green; by March it has gone the slate blue of cold mountains. The Alps sit across the water, close enough to feel.
Überlingen, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Überlingen sits on the northern shore of the Überlinger See, the narrow northwest arm of Lake Constance, in Baden-Württemberg about 20 kilometres west of Friedrichshafen. The town holds roughly 23,000 residents. Lake Constance itself spans 536 square kilometres, the third-largest lake in Central Europe, bordering Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Trains reach the Altstadt via the Bodenseegürtelbahn from Radolfzell; passenger ferries cross from Meersburg and Mainau Island. The town's Therme draws thermal water from a depth of around 1,000 metres beneath the limestone.
The St. Nikolaus Münster, begun around 1350 and completed in 1576, anchors the upper town. Its five naves rise from Rorschach sandstone quarried on the Swiss shore and rafted across the lake. Inside, the carved wooden high altar by Jörg Zürn, finished between 1613 and 1616, stands roughly 12 metres tall, one of the largest late-Renaissance altars north of the Alps. Four medieval towers and long stretches of the 14th-century town wall still ring the Altstadt, including the Gallerturm above the steep dry moat.
The Überlinger See is the deepest finger of Lake Constance, reaching 147 metres near Sipplingen. Since 1958 the Bodensee-Wasserversorgung pipeline has drawn drinking water from this basin and pumped it to roughly four million people across Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart among them. The lake almost never freezes; the last complete Seegfrörne, when locals walked across the ice to the Swiss shore, was the winter of 1962-63. Summer swimmers use the Westbad and the public beaches along the promenade between the town gardens and the harbour mole.