Lava-Dome Mendig: volcano museum and lava cellar tour

Lava-Dome or beer cellar? Two attractions that are constantly confused

Beneath Mendig lies a single large cellar system that grew over the centuries. But it is opened up by two different operators, in separate sections, with separate tours and separate tickets.

The Lava-Dome is a museum. It houses the exhibition and takes you down into the lava cellars: this is the geological and mining perspective. How the rock was formed, how it was quarried, and what it all has to do with the Laacher See.

A few hundred metres away, the Vulkan Brauerei shows you its own beer cellar: this is the brewing perspective. How beer was stored down here, why Mendig was once full of breweries, and what still matures in wooden casks today.

Both are worth seeing. But they are not the same thing, and a ticket for one will not get you into the other.

Prices as of August 2026 · Sources: lavadome.de, vulkan-brauerei.de

If you are travelling with children, the Lava-Dome is clearly the better choice: museum plus cellars, a lift instead of stairs, and an exhibition built to be touched. The brewery cellar is more of a destination for adults, and there is more on that further down.

The Lava-Dome: 700 square metres of volcano

The museum opened in 2005 and is laid out across 700 square metres in three sections.

Land der Vulkane, the land of volcanoes, is a multimedia show about the two great eruptions that shaped this landscape. Vulkanwerkstatt, the volcano workshop, is the part where children get stuck in: ten experiment stations where you try out for yourself how magma behaves, why rock fractures and what a seismograph actually measures. Zeit der Vulkane, the age of volcanoes, shows current seismological data, a stylised research camp and a circular cinema in which a fictional news broadcast plays through another eruption of the Laacher See volcano.

That is exactly what ties all this in with the rest of the area: the volcano at the heart of it is the same one whose crater lies filled with water nine kilometres from the holiday home. If you have already seen the Laacher See and its circular walks and then go into the Lava-Dome, you suddenly read the landscape differently. Gas bubbles still rise on the south-eastern shore of the lake to this day, and the museum explains why.

32 metres beneath Mendig: the lava cellars

The cellars are not a natural phenomenon. They are a mine.

The rock they were cut into is a cooled lava flow from the Wingertsberg volcano, which erupted around 200,000 years ago. This basalt lava is exceptionally hard and even-grained, the ideal material for millstones. From the late Middle Ages, and on a grand scale from the 18th century onwards, it was quarried and shipped down the Rhine to be sold across half of Europe.

The catch: above the basalt lie around 30 metres of material thrown out by the Laacher See volcano, laid down in the eruption 13,000 years ago. So the miners had to dig through the pumice first to reach the stone. What they left behind is a system of chambers covering almost three square kilometres and reaching up to 32 metres deep, according to the town of Mendig the largest basalt lava mine in the world.

When the millstone industry collapsed in the 19th century, a second career began. From 1843, brewers discovered that the tunnels stay cool at a constant temperature all year round, and before the invention of refrigeration that was worth a fortune. At one point 28 breweries stored their beer down here, in a town of around 2,800 inhabitants. Just one of them is left, the Vulkan Brauerei.

How the guided tour works

For safety reasons you can only enter the lava cellars on a guided tour. It lasts around 60 minutes and you go down by lift. Both the museum and the cellars are accessible, and wheelchairs can be borrowed.

According to the operator it is 8 to 9 °C down there all year round. That sounds cool enough, and it feels cooler still when you have just come out of 28 degrees of summer heat in a T-shirt. Bring a jacket for every member of the family, and sturdy shoes as well.

Dogs are not allowed inside; guide dogs and assistance dogs are the exception.

Prices and opening times

The family ticket applies from one adult with one child upwards. Groups of 15 or more pay their own rates and have to register. As of August 2026 · Source: lavadome.de/besucherservice

Museum opening times: Tuesday to Sunday and on public holidays 10:00 to 17:30, last admission 16:45. During the school holidays in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia it also opens on Mondays. Closing dates include the second Sunday of Advent to 25 December, 1 January, the end of the Christmas holidays to 31 January and the carnival period.

Cellar tours: Tuesday to Friday at 13:30. On Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays at 12:00, 13:30 and 15:00. During the school holidays daily, Mondays included, at all three times. As of August 2026 · Source: lavadome.de/besucherservice

You cannot book ahead for the public cellar tours, so plan around the times and fit the exhibition in either side. During the school holidays and in wet weather it pays to be there early enough.

Address: Brauerstraße 1, 56743 Mendig · Telephone 02652 9399222 · Parking at the site.

The brewery’s beer cellar, the other underworld

A few hundred metres away, the Vulkan Brauerei runs its own cellar tour, and it is deliberately different: it is about brewing history, about those 28 breweries, and about the casks maturing down there today. You go down 153 steps, around 30 metres into the ground, which is not accessible and quite an undertaking with small children.

The cellar tour costs 14.00 €, the brewery tour 19.00 € and the beer tasting 25.00 € (as of August 2026, source vulkan-brauerei.de). All of them run at weekends and on public holidays, and booking is required. You will find the details in our article on the beer cellar at the Vulkan Brauerei in Mendig.

Our honest advice: doing both in one day is too much with children. With children, choose the Lava-Dome; without them, the brewery is a treat. Or do both, but over two days.

What you can combine into one day

The Lava-Dome is stop 6 on the Deutsche Vulkanstraße, a 280-kilometre volcano route with 39 stops running right across the volcanic region. Four of them lie close together and add up to a satisfying day:

• Stop 1, the car park at the Erntekreuz, the viewpoint above the Laacher See, on the L113 between Maria Laach and Mendig and so right on the way from Rieden. A five-minute stop, and the best overview of the crater.
• Stop 2, Maria Laach Abbey, eight kilometres from the holiday home. The Benedictine abbey on the Laacher See, with its monastery restaurant and nursery garden, is the obvious lunch stop.
• Stop 6, Lava-Dome Mendig, the main event.
• Stop 7, the Wingertsbergwand, the pumice wall on the edge of Mendig, up to 40 metres high, freely accessible and with information boards. Here you see in cross-section exactly the deposit the miners had to dig through to reach the basalt. After a visit to the museum, the wall suddenly makes sense.

If you want to go deeper underground still, 13 kilometres from Rieden you will find the counterpart in Mayen with its slate mine: same idea, different rock, different story.

Getting there from Rieden

It is 15 kilometres from Rieden. The prettier route runs via Maria Laach and along the L113 past the Laacher See, which lets you take in the Erntekreuz and the abbey on the way. Coming from the A61, leave at Mendig/Maria Laach, join the B262 towards Mendig and after a short stretch turn left, signposted Lava-Dome/Lavakeller.

FAQs

Back to the Waldsee

A morning in the museum, an hour underground, lunch at the abbey, and by the afternoon you are back at the water within a quarter of an hour. That is exactly what the setting of the three holiday homes at the Riedener Waldsee is made for: the great sights of the volcanic region all lie within a 15-kilometre radius, and the way back does not run along the motorway but through the forest.

After a day underground, the lake up here is exactly what you want.