Stadt Grimma

Visit Grimma - Jewels from Volcanoes - Geopark “Porphyry Land. Saxony’s Wealth of Rocks

Around 290 million years ago, 500 million year old marine sediments were buried under 800 meters of volcanic deposits. However, there are several isolated outcrops of these marine sediments in the geopark, for example the hill Collmberg near Wermsdorf. The geopark is mainly composed of pyroclastic flow deposits, lava flows and volcanic tuff. Striking examples of these are the porphyry tuff on Rochlitz Hill and the quartz-porphyries near Wurzen. Millions of years of intense weathering has converted these volcanic rocks into valuable kaolin clay. During the Tertiary, around 66 million years ago, the geopark region was located on the southern coast of the North Sea. This is the time of lignite formation and lignite mining in the area can be traced back to 1697.

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