The old approach is off-limits to visitors. And the gate swings freely open, at the touch of anyone who wants to pose it for a souvenir snapshot. Just outside the gate, there is a pleasant, cool-looking stream. But its sides are beeline-straight, concrete walls that parallel the old camp wall, and this stream flows along without a gurgle or a splash, without the slightest sound. Inside, grass and wildflowers grow between the walls and the expanse of white gravel and exposed foundations.
Religious memorials stand at the far end of the campsite from the museum.
The onion dome of the Russian memorial stands just outside the wall, to the northwest. That way also are a Carmelite convent, built to resemble the old barracks, and the preserved crematorium. Guard towers still stand watch. The earliest record of Dachau is in a ninth-century document attesting that a noblewoman named Erchana had donated property there to a cathedral. Three hundred years later, a local count built himself a castle on top of the Giglberg hill.