Scientists estimate that the town of Nördlingen and its surrounding area contain approximately 72,000 tons of diamonds.
Every structure in the town of Nördlingen, located in Bavaria, southern Germany, is embedded with millions of tiny diamonds, the result of a meteorite impact that occurred 15 million years ago.
The collision created the Ries Crater, a massive depression that spans over 14 kilometers across the countryside, where the town of Nördlingen now stands. It also produced suevite, a type of breccia that includes many sharp-edged fragments, which can contain glass, crystals, and diamonds, commonly found in areas affected by such impacts.
When the meteorite struck Earth, the impact force caused the gneiss and graphite rocks in the region to form diamonds due to immense pressure of up to 60 gigapascals.
Although the nearly perfect circular town appears to fill a complete crater, Nördlingen is actually situated within the 26-kilometer-wide Nördlinger Ries crater, and the town’s circular shape is merely coincidental, according to Mail.
The town of Nördlingen built from diamonds. (Photo: Smithsonian Magazine).
“We believe the meteorite that fell here was a rocky body weighing about three billion tons. This meteorite was as large as the town of Nördlingen, with a diameter of one kilometer,” said Gisela Pösges, a geologist and deputy director of the Ries Crater Museum in Nördlingen.
It was not until 898 that the first settlers began to inhabit the area. During the Middle Ages, they built protective walls around the town. To construct each building, masons had to use the nearest material they could find, which was suevite stones.
“In some parts of the world, materials born from such asteroid impacts are used for construction, but nowhere else is there as large a quantity as in Nördlingen. Here, diamond-containing rock is used to build the entire town,” shared Dr. Stefan Hölzl, a geologist and director of the Nördlingen RiesKrater Museum.
“Our St. Georgs Church is built from suevite stone and contains about 5,000 carats of diamonds. However, they are very small, with the largest only measuring 0.3mm in diameter and have no economic value. They are scientifically significant, and you can observe the diamonds under a microscope,” Pösges said.
During the construction of the town, the residents did not realize that the stones they were quarrying to build structures were remnants of the meteorite. For centuries, locals believed that the massive depression was a volcano until the 1960s, when geologist Eugene Shoemaker officially confirmed that the crater was formed by a meteorite. A decade later, scientists analyzed rock samples and discovered diamonds. They estimated that the Ries crater contains over 72,000 tons of diamonds.
According to Dr. Stefan Hölzl, NASA astronauts from the Apollo 14 and Apollo 16 missions even visited Nördlingen before exploring the Moon to learn about the types of rocks they might find in space. However, despite the diamonds making the town sparkle under the sun, they have no economic value.
Nördlingen looks like every characteristic German town with red-roofed wooden houses, cobblestone alleys, and a towering church spire against the sky.
Today, the town of Nördlingen is also famous for its diamonds, with many tourists intentionally trying to steal sparkling items thinking they contain diamonds. Locals have even posted slogans like “crushed diamonds have no value,” but this has had little effect.
Even though they live on a diamond mine day after day, the residents of Nördlingen seem to find it quite normal. While many tourists travel from afar to admire the diamond-studded town, a local said: “People say we live on a diamond mine. This is true, but I don’t see anything unusual at all.”
