A 710-year-old church began its slow journey to a new home on Thursday (Oct 25) at 2km per hour, on a huge flatbed trailer, leaving behind an eastern German village being turned over to open-pit coal mining. [SMH]
It would take a week for the church to move to its new home, just 12km away
The Emmaus Church was first mentioned in historical documents in 1297. It has to move from its old home village of Heuersdorf outside Leipzig to the town of Borna, 12 km away, after the regional legislature passed a law in 2004 approving plans to dig up the village to mine 50 million tonnes of brown coal which will supply the electrical power station at Lippendorf near Leipzig.
The coal mining company Mibrag is paying 3 million Euros to move the church.