For much of the 20th century, the Lusatia region in eastern Germany — lying between the cities of Berlin and Dresden — was defined by industrial extraction. Under the former East German government, miners removed more than two billion tonnes of lignite (a low-grade form of coal known as brown coal) from the earth, leaving behind enormous open-pit craters that stretched for kilometres. Entire villages were relocated. The landscape was fundamentally altered.
Since German reunification in 1990, a decades-long transformation has been quietly underway. The craters have been gradually flooded to create what is becoming Europe's largest artificial water landscape: the Lusatian Lakeland, or Lausitzer Seenland in German — a network of 23 lakes covering a total of approximately 14,000 hectares (34,600 acres) in the states of Saxony and Brandenburg.
The newest and largest lake, Lake Sedlitz — measuring 1,400 hectares (3,460 acres) — is set to open for swimming and boating at the end of April 2026, making it the single largest recreational lake in the entire network. On 29 June 2026, a key milestone will be reached when five lakes are connected by navigable canals, forming a continuous water area of around 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres).
The economic impact is already visible. In 2025, the region recorded approximately 800,000 overnight stays in registered accommodation — with tourism from the Czech Republic growing by 12.7 percent in a single year. The long-term ambition is 1.5 million visitors annually.
Where excavators once ran day and night, there are now marinas, campsites, sailing schools, and cycling routes. The transformation is not yet complete — the last active mines in the region are not expected to close until 2038 — but the shape of what is being built is already remarkable.