Another Walk, Another Village

Last month, I told you here about a walk my sister and I took to a village on the other side of the river. Yesterday, we took full advantage of it being a day off (Good Friday) and being the first sunny and dry day of an otherwise very stormy, wet and rather cold week.

We set off in the opposite direction of where we'd been last time, with no particular plan - all we wanted was to be OUT in the open, catching sunshine and fresh air.

Along the way, we came across this scene. It is not the barn that captured my interest here...

...but this beautiful heron:

On we walked, and by now we had decided to explore Möglingen, a village next to our hometown of Ludwigsburg. Möglingen has nearly 11.000 inhabitants (Ludwigsburg has crossed the 90.000-threshold last year) and, administratively, is part of Ludwigsburg, but has its own mayor.
The first glimpse we had of it was this:

Coming closer, it became obvious how much older this one, like all of the surrounding villages, is than Ludwigsburg itself. The first written mention of Möglingen is on a document dated 1275. Our town was founded centuries later, when in 1704 building of the palace (which was supposed to be "just a tiny hunting lodge" at first!) began.

The church is called Pankratiuskirche. It is of Gothic origin and was extensively renovated in the 1970s. In the course of the work, frescoes from the 15th century were discovered. I would have liked to go inside and found the door open, but there was work in progress; some people were setting up scaffolding for I don't know what. Probably something to do with Easter services.

Near the church are what look to be the oldest buildings still intact. The building in the left picture is a 16th century structure, originally built as a barn where farmers were meant to bring a tenth of all their produce as tax. Nowadays, it houses a library and rooms for cultural events.

This monument to someone who must have been quite important to Möglingen is at the church wall. As you would expect, the language used in the late 1700s was somewhat different from German as it is spoken and written today. My sister liked the angel and asked me to take this picture.

Another one of the older houses near the church. A bit further down the road, much of what makes up the village center consists of ugly concrete architecture so typical for the 1970s, when the village had plenty of money to spend and wanted to "modernize" everything.

An otherwise unassuming residential street is made beautiful by this glorious magnolia tree.

 What's this?! Has a UFO landed in Möglingen?!

This unusual building was opened in 1993. It houses Möglingen's Youth Club and was built by the village's young people in cooperation with students from Stuttgart university. According to wikipedia, the top bit is a movable "sun-eye". In winter, it is turned towards the sun to catch and store solar energy. In the summer, it is turned away from the sun, following a 5-minute-rhythm of gradual turns so that the inside of the building remains pleasantly cool.

By the time we arrived back at my place, we had been walking for about 3 hours and were SO ready for coffee and a slice of cake!
We are already thinking about which village we can explore on our next walk.