Burg on Fehmarn: Discover the Historic Town and Island Culture

Experience the history of Burg

If you would like to combine a historic town atmosphere with a variety of walking tours on Fehmarn, Burg offers a diverse selection. The old town, churches, museums and themed trails each focus on different aspects: sometimes the development of the town takes center stage, sometimes an individual building, and sometimes the perspective of the painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. This allows you to plan your days according to your interests and switch between history, art and experiences in nature.

In 2026, historical town and church tours through St. Nicholas Church and the 800-year-old town of Burg will once again be on the event program of the Fehmarn Tourism Service. The tour lasts around 90 minutes and starts at the Fehmarn Museum at Breite Straße 49. This combines a clearly defined town tour with two central historical themes of the island town.

Chapels, museum and historic evidence

St. Jürgen Chapel offers another way to explore the history of the town. It was originally built outside the town walls as a plague chapel for lepers and outcasts. During the season, Friedel Beck offers a tour or lecture lasting around half an hour on the history of St. Jürgen Chapel every second Monday at 5:00 p.m.

The Fehmarn Museum is located in the oldest house on the island, the former parson’s widow’s house dating from 1581. Its 23 exhibition rooms cover Fehmarn’s geological history and geology, the island’s eventful history, traditional crafts, the significance of the guilds, as well as seafaring, fishing and hunting. This makes a visit to the museum a wide-ranging encounter with Fehmarn’s natural and cultural themes.

Tours offering different perspectives

An official audio guide tour through Burg is just under 3 kilometers long and takes around 35 minutes. It leads through the historic old town to the town hall, the traditional Senator Thomsen House, St. Jürgen Chapel, the Fehmarn Museum and St. Nicholas Church. Those who prefer a clearly measured route with several historic destinations will find this a well-defined way to explore Burg.

The “In Kirchner’s Footsteps” circular route leads through Burg in the footsteps of the Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. It connects places where he worked with recognizable pictorial motifs on Fehmarn. The Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Documentation complements this perspective with full-size reproductions of important paintings, historic photographs, reproductions of sketchbook pages, as well as information about the artist’s life and work.

St. Nicholas Church itself also provides a striking historical highlight. It is a Gothic brick church built between 1230 and 1250, and houses a remarkable late Gothic wooden winged altarpiece divided horizontally. The Butterfly Park Fehmarn provides a nature-oriented counterpoint, with a large free-flight hall home to 600 to 1,000 butterflies and up to 100 butterfly species.

Choose a hotel according to your interests

When choosing a hotel for your trip to Burg, you can first decide which of these themes should shape your stay: town tours, the museum, short audio guide routes, connections to Kirchner, church art or a nature experience in the free-flight hall. The different options give your planning a clear direction without requiring a single travel theme to define your visit.

Other places in the same destination area

Other places in the same destination area include Staberdorf, Bannesdorf, Püttsee, Klausdorf, Lemkendorf, Puttgarden, Blieschendorf and Neujellingsdorf.

For the overview of the broader destination: Fehmarn.