Muenster Send

Munster's Send takes its name from the medieval church synods it once accompanied, growing from an eleventh-century market alongside those clergy assemblies into a purely secular funfair. Held three times a year on the roughly 32,000-square-metre Schlossplatz beside Munster's baroque palace, it is the largest Volksfest in the Munsterland region, with up to 200 fairground businesses and close to a million combined visitors across its three annual editions.

The word 'Send' derives from 'synod', the twice-yearly assembly of clergy and diocesan representatives that met in Munster from the ninth century onward, and by around the eleventh century a market had grown up alongside those church gatherings, trading on privileges that lifted the usual restrictions placed on local merchants and craftsmen.