Weimar
UNESCO World Heritage Site: Classical Weimar (1998), And Part Of The Bauhaus Inscription (1996); The Town Of Goethe, Schiller, Liszt, Nietzsche And The First Bauhaus School, And Of The 1919 Constitution · Weimar, Thuringia
Weimar is a small Thuringian town of some 65,000 people that carried an outsized share of German culture. Goethe lived here for about fifty years, Schiller died here, Herder preached here, Liszt taught here, Nietzsche's archive was set up here, the Weimar Republic took its name from the constitution written here in 1919, and the Bauhaus was founded here the same year before it moved to Dessau. Nearly all of it sits within fifteen minutes on foot, which makes Weimar one of the easiest serious literary pilgrimages in Europe: Goethe's house on the Frauenplan, Schiller's house, the Duchess Anna Amalia Library with its oval galleries, and the Park an der Ilm with Goethe's garden house in it. On the hill above the town stands Buchenwald, one of the largest concentration camps in Germany, where tens of thousands of people were killed. It is a memorial, not a sight, and it is part of what Weimar is. Classical Weimar was inscribed by UNESCO in 1998 and the Bauhaus sites in 1996.
Weimar old town and the Park an der Ilm, central Thuringia, Weimar, Thuringia, Germany
The town itself is open ground and the Park an der Ilm never closes. The museums and writers' houses belong mostly to one foundation and share a pattern: open daily except one weekday - commonly Tuesday here rather than the usual German Monday - with shorter winter hours and last admission around half an hour before closing. Confirm the closing day for each house, because two shut doors empty a day in a town this size. Buchenwald Memorial on the hill above opens daily with free entry, on shorter winter hours, and the exhibitions close before the terrain does - confirm.