Thuringian cities and towns

An enormous variety in the arts and cultural life awaits the visitor to the towns and cities of Thuringia. Half-timbered houses, Royal palaces and sights without number are evidence of the sheer wealth of the history of this area.

This history is closely linked with the lives and works of the most important representatives of German cultural and intellectual life. Museums, theatres, exhibitions and concert halls invite you to encounters with the works of the poets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, of the composers Johann Sebastian Bach and Franz Liszt or the painters Lucas Cranach and Otto Dix.

Luther ’s Wartburg, the German classics heritage and the Bauhaus in Weimar count among the protected sites of the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage.

Welcome to medieval Erfurt, to classical Weimar, to Eisenach with the mighty Wartburg Castle and to Jena, the city of the sciences.

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Special: The Bauhaus in Weimar

In 1919, the architect Walter Gropius united the School of Arts and Crafts founded by Henry van de Velde with the Weimar Art School to form the State Bauhaus. Aiming to form a creative framework for new holistic works taking architecture as the leading art, he combined the disciplines of sculpture, painting, arts and crafts. A new and lasting epoch of building and interior decoration was born.

All the artists and teachers of any consequence at the time came to Weimar. Feininger, Itten, Klee, Marcks, Muche and Schlemmer were the most prominent. Their work and that of others can still be viewed - not only in the Weimar Bauhaus Museum which is yet another UNESCO World Heritage sight.                        

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