The Stadt- und Pfarrkirche St. Marien zu Wittenberg (Town and Parish Church of St. Mary’s) is the civic church of the German town of Lutherstadt Wittenberg. The reformers Martin Luther and Johannes Bugenhagen preached there and the building also saw the first celebration of the mass in German rather than Latin and the first ever distribution of the bread and wine to the congregation – it is thus considered the mother-church of the Protestant Reformation. Since 1996 it has been a World Heritage Site – it, the Castle Church of All Saints (Schlosskirche), the Lutherhaus, the Melanchthonhaus and the surrounding Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm form the world’s densest concentration of World Heritage Sites in one area. read more…
Königstein Fortress, the “Saxon Bastille“, is a hilltop fortress near Dresden, in Saxon Switzerland, above the town of Königstein on the left bank of the River Elbe. It is one of the largest hilltop fortifications in Europe and sits atop the table hill of the same name. The 9.5 hectare rock plateau rises 240 metres above the Elbe and has over 50 buildings, some over 400 years old, that bear witness to the military and civilian life in the fortress. The rampart run of the fortress is 1,800 metres long with walls up to 42 metres high and steep sandstone faces. In the centre of the site is a 152.5 metre deep well, which is the deepest in Saxony and second deepest well in Europe. The fortress, which for centuries was used as a state prison, is still intact and is now one of Saxony‘s foremost tourist attractions, with 700,000 visitors per year. read more…
The Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar houses a major collection of German literature and historical documents. The library contains 1,000,000 books, 2,000 medieval and early modern manuscripts, 600 ancestral registers, 10,000 maps, and 4,000 musical scripts. The research library today has approximately 850,000 volumes with collection emphasis on the German literature. Among its special collections is an important Shakespeare collection of approximately 10,000 volumes, as well as a 16th-century Bible connected to Martin Luther. Today, the library is a public research library for literature and art history. One of the library’s most famous patrons was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who worked there from 1797 to 1832. The library also includes the world’s largest Faust collection. The Duchess’s significant 13,000-volume music collection is also available in the library. read more…
