About 160 years ago poor workmen of Langenstein started to carve apartments into the sandstone massif of the Harz mountains. These homeless farm workers' families were told in the middle of the 19th century: "Build your homes into the rock" and they did.
These unique testimonies to the poverty of farm workers during the industrial revolution are on average 30 square meters in size. The cave dwellings consist of three rooms: living room, kitchen and bedroom. The interior has no doors, because the kitchen was heated by the stove and the heat should be distributed in all rooms. There were only one or two small windows on the entrance side. A hole, sometimes several meters long, was laboriously driven through the kitchen ceiling to serve as a smoke outlet.
Five out of ten caves have been preserved and restored for visitors. The last of these apartments is said to have been inhabited until 1916. The cave dwellings in Langenstein are now a tourist attraction.
