Find Germany’s Biggest Advent Calendar in This Town

The fragrance of fresh-cut pine and roasting chestnuts fills the air as towns and cities throughout Germany open the holiday season with open-air Christmas markets. Rustic cabins spring up in market squares, each filled with traditional sweets, decorations, food and local handcrafts. No two are alike, but Gengenbach, in the Black Forest region, is unique for the giant Advent calendar covering the entire façade of its Baroque town hall.

Each evening at 6 p.m., a new window is opened to reveal an original work of art by a foremost artist. In the past, these have included Marc Chagall and Andy Warhol; this year’s works are by one of Germany’s most renowned contemporary illustrators, Olaf Hajek, and this year’s theme is paradise.

Each of the 24 windows has a different work of art, and they remain open throughout Advent, a colorful backdrop to the town’s equally colorful Christmas market. Each afternoon, before the window is opened and its scene revealed, a program is presented from the stage in front of the town hall, beginning at 5 p.m. (3 p.m. on weekends). The event is free, and the windows remain open and lighted all night through Jan. 6.

Gengenbach’s Christmas Market coincides with Advent calendar days, opening Nov. 30 and open every day until Dec. 23. Decorated cabins and tents are filled with handmade gifts that vary with individual craftsmen, but will always include colorful nutcrackers, miniatures for creche sets, brightly painted wooden toys, puppets, embroidered table linens, woolen hats, marzipan fruits, candles, and blown-glass Christmas tree ornaments.

Christmas ornaments are in every style and medium, from pewter and wood to wool and paper. Woodcarving is a popular traditional craft in the Black Forest, and you can expect to find cuckoo clocks, another Black Forest specialty.