Places to Explore

• Bautzen/Budysin

  Bautzen has perched high above a deep granite valley formed by the river Spree for more than 1,000 years. Its almost-intact city walls hide a remarkably well-preserved city with wandering back alleyways... (more)

• Dessau

  The name "Dessau" is known to every student of modern architecture. In 1925-26 architect Walter Gropius set up his highly influential Bauhaus school of design here. Gropius hoped to replace the dark and... (more)

• Dresden

  Saxony's capital city sits in baroque splendor on a wide sweep of the Elbe River, and its proponents are working with German thoroughness to recapture the city's old reputation as "the Florence on the... (more)

• Eisenach

  When you stand in Eisenach's ancient market square it's difficult to imagine this half-timber town as an important center of the East German automobile industry. Yet this is where Wartburgs (very tiny... (more)

• Erfurt

  The city of Erfurt emerged from World War II relatively unscathed, with most of its innumerable towers intact. Of all the cities in the region, Erfurt is the most evocative of its prewar self. The city's... (more)

• Freyburg

  Stepping off the train in the sleepy town of Freyburg, it is not difficult to see why locals call the area "the Tuscany of the North." With clean, wandering streets, whitewashed buildings, and a huge castle... (more)

• Görlitz

  Tucked away on the country's easternmost corner, Görlitz's quiet, narrow cobblestone alleys and exquisite architecture make it one of Germany's most beautiful cities. It was almost completely untouched... (more)

• Goslar

  Goslar, the lovely, unofficial capital of the Harz region, is one of Germany's oldest cities and is known for the medieval glamour expressed in the fine Romanesque architecture of the Kaiserpfalz, an imperial... (more)

• Halle

  Halle is a city that deserves a second look. The first impression given by the ever-under-construction train station and dismal tram ride into town doesn't do justice to this 1,000-year-old city built... (more)

• Leipzig

  Leipzig is, in a word, cool—but not so cool as to be pretentious. With its world-renowned links to Bach, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Luther, Goethe, Schiller, and the fantastic Neue-Leipziger-Schule art... (more)

• Lutherstadt-Wittenberg

  Protestantism was born in the little town of Wittenberg (officially called Lutherstadt-Wittenberg). In 1508 the fervent, idealistic young Martin Luther, who had become a priest only a year earlier, arrived... (more)

• Meissen

  This romantic city on the Elbe River is known the world over for its porcelain, bearing the trademark crossed blue swords. The first European porcelain was made in this area in 1708, and in 1710 the Royal... (more)

• Naumburg

  Once a powerful trading and ecclesiastical city, 1,000-year-old Naumburg is the cultural center of the Salle-Unstrut. Although the city is most famous for its Romanesque/Gothic cathedral, it hides a well-preserved... (more)

• Quedlinburg

  This medieval Harz town has more half-timber houses than any other town in Germany: more than 1,600 of them line the narrow cobblestone streets and squares. The town escaped World War II unscathed, and... (more)

• Weimar

  Sitting prettily in the geographical center of Thuringia, Weimar occupies a place in German political and cultural history completely disproportionate to its size (population 63,000). It's not even particularly... (more)