Medieval Rastede

Rastede is a town of about 23,000 people in the Ammerland district of Lower Saxony, a dozen kilometres north of Oldenburg on the edge of the North German marshes. Its history begins with a Benedictine monastery founded in 1091 a few hundred metres from the parish church; it received its own church five years later and, through extensive landholdings, became one of the religious centres of the north-west before the Reformation.

The secularised monastery was turned into a summer residence by Count Anton Günther of Oldenburg in the 17th century, with a hunting lodge and the stables of the famous Oldenburg horse-breeder, and after 1777 Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig acquired and enlarged it into the present Schloss Rastede. After the revolution of 1918 the last Grand Duke, Friedrich August, made it his permanent home, and the palace remains in the family. The Schlosspark around it, with the Ellernteich pond, is open to the public; in 1949 a horse-show ground was laid out in the park, and the Oldenburger Landesturnier has been ridden there since 1950.

That tournament ground and park are where the Mittelalterlich Phantasie Spectaculum sets up for four days every Ascension weekend, its 28th Rastede edition in 2026, with around 120 market stalls and more than 50 encampments. Rastede has a station on the Oldenburg–Wilhelmshaven line, about 15 minutes from Oldenburg, whose medieval-origin old town and Lamberti church are the nearest historic sights.