Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia: Places to Explore

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... Read more

The name "Dessau" is known to students of modern architecture as the epicenter of architect Walter Gropius' highly influential Bauhaus school of design. During the 1920s, Gropius hoped to replace the dark... Read more

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

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... Read more

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, and it's... Read more

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... Read more

Tucked away in the country's easternmost corner (bordering Poland), Görlitz's quiet, narrow cobblestone alleys and exquisite architecture make it one of Germany's most beautiful cities. It emerged... Read more

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... Read more

Halle is a city that deserves a second look. The first impression of ever-under-construction train station and dismal tram ride into town hides a pretty 1,000-year-old city built on the salt trade. It... Read more

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

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... Read more

This romantic city with its imposing castle looming over 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... Read more

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... Read more

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 destruction during World War... Read more

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... Read more