Wherever you look in the Barossa, a church steeple breaks the skyline. These Lutheran churches are the truest map of the valley’s Silesian founding.
Faith brought them here
The Barossa's first German settlers were Lutherans fleeing religious persecution in Prussian Silesia in the 1840s. Faith wasn't incidental to their migration - it was the reason for it. So the first thing they built in each new settlement was a church.
A steeple in every village
Drive the valley today and you'll lose count of the spires. Tanunda alone has several landmark Lutheran churches, including the much-photographed Langmeil church with its avenue of date palms and the graves of the first settlers. Smaller villages like Bethany, Light Pass and Gnadenberg near Hill of Grace each kept their own modest house of worship.
Reading the landscape
The churches are more than pretty buildings; they're a map of where and how the settlers spread. Many sit at the heart of the old strassendorf (street villages) the Silesians laid out, with cottages and long garden strips running back from a single road.
Still in use
Most of these churches still hold services, and many keep their original organs, timberwork and graveyards. A slow loop of the valley's steeples is one of the most rewarding - and free - ways to understand the Barossa beyond the cellar door.
