“Where else can you find so many good things in one place?” (Goethe on Weimar)
Earlier in the year my wife and I had listened to a radio serialisation of Katja Hoyer’s new book Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe. We decided that we would make an overland trip to Weimar, a city that I had visited briefly in 1985 when it was in the Communist DDR, and combine it with visiting some Czech spa towns that were once in the Sudetenland (the part of Czechoslovakia that was annexed by Hitler in 1938 after the Munich Agreement). As it is not practical to travel to or from the area by train in a single day, we chose to stop off on a few other places en route. I did most of the detailed planning only two months in advance, when some of the advance rail tickets we wanted had gone on sale. It made economic sense to use a four day flexible Interrail pass for the longer legs of our journey, with the other tickets being bought for less than the marginal cost of an extra day on an Interrail pass.
When I came to double check the itinerary just a couple of weeks before departure, I was dismayed to discover that many of the legs had timetable changes, with a lot of rail replacement buses on the routes we had originally intended to take. These, together with some further unscheduled disruptions, made the logistics a bit of a challenge. The Interrail pass was a lifesaver, as it enabled us to change our route at short notice, reacting to changing circumstances.
Day 1 – Monday 12th October 2026 – London to Marburg
When I had been to Bonn earlier in the year, I had just made a tight connection in Brussels, because the 09:01 Eurostar from London had been slightly delayed. I decided that we would not risk missing the connection for this trip as we had rather further to go, so we booked the 08:16 departure from St Pancras. The Interrail passes we had were first class, so that allowed us to travel in Eurostar’s Standard Plus class, which served a light breakfast of yoghurt and a Danish Pastry. (I knew that the food offering in Standard Plus is limited, so I took the precaution of also having some breakfast at St Pancras before boarding the train.)
The train’s final destination was Amsterdam and it ran on time, arriving in Brussels at 11:13. This gave us about an hour until the Deutsche Bahn ICE to Frankfurt was due to leave, so we spent the time thoroughly exploring Brussels Midi station. Brussels Midi was fairly quiet as there was a train strike cancelling many Belgian trains that day – fortunately, non-Belgian operators were not affected. My wife bought a waffle for lunch, but having had two breakfasts, I did not feel like eating again. When we went to the platform, the Deutsche Bahn train we needed was sitting there but, as is usual, the doors were only opened to let the passengers board a few minutes before departure.
The train departed on time and followed the familiar route that I have travelled on a number of occasions to Cologne. En route, I used the order to seat service to sample Paulaner’s Oktoberfest beer. For this trip we were not getting off at Cologne, where many of the passengers disembarked, but were continuing through to the train’s final destination of Frankfurt am Main. There was the usual congestion passing through Cologne, which delayed the train, but some of the delay was clawed back and we reached Frankfurt only a few minutes late.
In Frankfurt we had a walk along the concourse to find our 15:50 train to Marburg. We knew that the train we were due to catch from Frankfurt would divide during its journey and only half of it would be going to Marburg. When we reached the platform, it was not indicating which half was which, so we had to enquire as to where we should get on. The train followed the valley of the river Lahn, arriving in Marburg a few minutes late at about 5:15pm. There is only one town in Germany called Marburg, yet the station signs and timetable still describe it as Marburg (Lahn). Presumably this is to distinguish it from Maribor in Slovenia, which was also known as Marburg when it was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of World War I.
Our hotel was fairly near the station, a short walk from the old town. As rain was forecast for the next morning, we decided to explore as much of Marburg as possible that evening. Marburg is an old university town, but there did not seem to be many students about. We walked past the Elisabethkirche and into the old town. Dotted around Marburg are various statues and other installations relating to fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm, who both studied at Marburg University. We walked up to Marburg Castle on a hill overlooking the town, before returning to the centre, looking at the outside of the Town Hall on the Market Square and the buildings of the old university.
We had booked in advance a table for dinner in a restaurant near the Town Hall. Here I dined on roast pork in a creamy sauce served with spätzle (a German variety of pasta). To drink, I began with a dark schwarzbier, but found this a little thin, so I switched to a far more flavoursome kellerbier.
Day 2 – Tuesday 13th October 2026 – Marburg to Kassel
After breakfast in our hotel, we set off to further explore Marburg. The Town Hall opened early so we went there first, passing on the way a statue of two horses drinking at a water trough.
We arrived at the Town Hall just as the the cock which is part of the clock at the top of the building was crowing to mark the hour. The Town Hall dates from the 16th century and is still the centre of administration for the city. Inside there is an exhibition on the history of Marburg which lines the staircase to the upper floors. On the ground floor there was a special exhibition about doctors and nurses.
Our information suggested that there was another exhibition on Marburg’s history in a different building on the Market Square, but when we went there it was firmly closed. As it was now beginning to rain and the castle was not yet open, we went to look inside the Elizabethkirche, but our information about there was also incorrect and it had not yet opened for the morning. So we walked up the hill to the castle, arriving just before its 10am opening time.
Marburg Castle (or Marburger Schloss in German) was built in the 11th century and later became the residence of the Landgrave of Hesse. The castle contains a small museum, and you can also see the the castle’s chapel and the knights hall.
When we had finished in the castle, I checked the times of trains to take us from Marburg to Kassel. However, I discovered that the line was blocked due to a train having hit somebody in the Marburg area and there was no clear information about when it might reopen or what the alternative options were. From the castle ramparts, we could see in the distance the stationary train which was blocking the line. I discovered that there was a Flixbus running between Marburg and Kassel later that afternoon and so I decided to book the last two seats, in case we could not leave by train by then. The DB app was still saying that the 12:21 train that we wanted to catch was running, but I thought this unlikely as the line was still closed. Nonetheless, we decided to go to the station to see what was happening. En route, we called in to look inside the Elisabethkirche which had by now opened. It is a massive Gothic construction that dates from the 13th century, and it became a Protestant church in the 16th century.
When we reached Marburg station, there were lots of people outside looking for alternative transport. The departure board was still showing the 12:21 service as running normally, which I knew could not be the case. However, within a few minutes this changed to say that a 12:21 special train starting in Marburg would be departing at the same time. We went to the platform and when the train that was sitting there departed, the next train was shown as going to Kassel and there were lots of people waiting for it. As the due departure time got closer, there was still no sign of it arriving. However, I noticed a train waiting on a far platform, which had the same rolling stock as the DB app indicated the Kassel train would be using. When we went there, the staff confirmed that it would be going to Kassel. Only when it got to the due departure time was there a station announcement that the platform had changed and even then the departure boards were still showing incorrect information. The announcement caused a sudden influx of passengers, delaying the departure by a few minutes.
The train arrived in Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe at about 1:30pm. When originally planning this trip we hoped to go to Kassel Hauptbahnhof, nearer the city centre, but engineering work meant that all trains were terminating at Wilhelmshöhe on the edge of the city. There is a large park at Wilhelmshöhe which contains water features and a large palace built for the Landgrave of Hesse and subsequently used as a summer palace by Kaiser Wilhlem II of Germany. We considered going to the palace and park, but given the water features had been turned off for the winter and we probably would not have time to explore the palace and its museums properly, we decided to defer a visit to another occasion. Instead we caught a tram towards the city centre.
We got off the tram on the edge of the city centre and went to the Hesse State Museum. The stately building of the museum has a tower, which we went up first for views over the city of Kassel. The museum was extremely comprehensive, detailing the history of Hesse from prehistoric times through to the present day. We spent all afternoon in the Hesse State Museum, only leaving at closing time.
Before dinner, we went to explore the centre of Kassel. The city suffered extensive damage during World War II and much of the centre is of fairly nondescript postwar construction. There are a few notable exceptions including the Fridericanium and the City Hall.
That evening for dinner I dined on onion soup followed by a schnitzel in a restaurant near our hotel.
Day 3 – Wednesday 14th October 2026 – Kassel to Weimar
Although we had decided not to go to the park at Wilhelmshöhe, there is another large park, the Karlsaue, in the centre of of Kassel. We went for a walk there in the morning before other places had opened. This area was fashioned as a landscaped park in the 18th century and the main building is the impressive Orangerie. There are a number of lakes within the park, as well as various statues. We spent about an hour walking in the Karlsaue, but that was not sufficient to do a full circuit of the park.
We arrived at Kassel City Museum when it opened at 10am and spent the rest of the morning there. It is not quite as large as the Hesse State Museum, but occupying three floors it provides a comprehensive history of the city. The ground floor covers the period from the first records of the city in the 10th century through to the 18th century, the first floor describes life in the 19th century and the development of civic society in Kassel, and the top floor covers the 20th century, including the city’s destruction in World War II.
When we visited Göttingen two years previously, there had been something we wanted to do there, but were unable to because it was closed on a Friday afternoon. In planning this current trip, we had intended to travel to Weimar via Göttingen, as there were regular local trains from Kassel to Göttingen and from Göttingen to Weimar, giving us a couple of hours in Göttingen. However, engineering work no longer made this feasible, as the local trains from Kassel to Göttingen were no longer running due to the closure of Kassel Hauptbahnhof and the Göttingen to Weimar service was being replaced by a bus for much of its route. As a compensation we thought we would have longer in Weimar, since we knew that there was lots to see there.
We had to return by tram to Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe to catch the 12:59 ICE train to take us to Erfurt, its next scheduled stop. We were encouraged that it was running on time and it left Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe punctually. However, only a few hundred metres out of the station the train stopped. Eventually there was an announcement that due to a points failure, the train would have to be rerouted and that a further announcement would be made about the likely delay when the new route had been confirmed. Just before we started moving again, we were told that the train would now go via Fulda, where it would need to change direction, and this would add an hour to our journey. At Fulda, the train sat around for quite a while and by the time it left the delay estimate had risen to 70 minutes. Just outside Gotha the train stopped again to let the train behind overtake us and we then pulled into Gotha station for another unscheduled stop where we had to wait until a replacement crew could join the train. We eventually reached Erfurt over 90 minutes late. There are frequent local trains from Erfurt to Weimar, but these also were all running late, so there was a guessing game to decide which platform the next Weimar train would be going from. We eventually arrived in Weimar at 16:20, 90 minutes later than scheduled.
As we knew there would be a lot to squeeze into our time in Weimar, we had hoped to visit the City Museum that afternoon, but our late arrival no longer made that possible. The station is some way from the historic centre so we walked to the Marktplatz, where the Tourist Information Office is located. I had been to Weimar in 1985 when it was in communist East Germany. I remembered visiting a market in the Marktplatz and the buildings in the photograph I took of it were still recognisable. I was puzzled why I had not photographed the impressive old town hall which occupies one side of the square – only to discover that, despite its appearance, it is a modern reconstruction and it was not there when I came in 1985.
We called in at the Tourist Information Office to purchase a couple of Weimar Cards. These last for 48 hours from first use and allow you to visit nearly all of the attractions in Weimar for free. We intended to make full use of them over the next two days – we calculated that they would have already paid for themselves after just one day.
That evening we had dinner in a traditional Wirtshaus, where we were lucky to get a table. I dined on chicken with potato salad. After dinner we continued to explore Weimar in the dark, primarily to get a feel for the layout of the city.
Weimar – a potted history
Before describing the two full days we spent exploring Weimar, it may be useful to summarise Weimar’s history over the last 250 years or so, since the same characters and themes popped up over and over again in the different places that we visited.
At the start of the 18th century Weimar was the capital of the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. In 1756, when aged 18, Duke Ernst August II married 16 year old Anna Amalia. Duke Ernst August II died just two years later, leaving Anna Amalia with a baby son and pregnant with a second child. Anna then reigned as regent of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach for 17 years until her elder son Karl August reached the age of majority. The period of Anna Amalia’s regency started the Golden Age of Weimar’s development as a cultural centre. She was responsible for attracting writers and philosophers such as Goethe, Schiller, Wieland and Herder to settle in Weimar. Weimar’s reputation as a cultural capital continued during the reign of Karl August, who appointed Goethe as his Privy Counsellor. The reputation of Weimar continued throughout the 19th century and it continued to attract artists, musicians, writers and philosophers.
After World War I, the Duchy was abolished and Weimar became part of the state of Thuringia. The Bauhaus school of design was founded in Weimar in 1919, emerging from the former Ducal Art School.
The National Theatre in Weimar was chosen as the place where delegates would meet in 1919 for six months to thrash out the constitution of the new post-war Germany. It is ironic that as well as being the birthplace of the new liberal constitution, Weimar was instrumental in the rise of the Nazis. Thuringia removed its laws restricting the Nazis, which were in force in many other states, enabling the Nazis to campaign in the state and eventually come to power. Hitler visited Weimar on many occasions and the Nazis held a number of rallies in the city. Nazi pressure caused Bauhaus to move to Dessau in 1925.
The Nazis opened the Buchenwald concentration camp, just outside Weimar, in 1937. By the time it was liberated by American forces in 1945, it is estimated that more than 50,000 people had died in Buchenwald, around a quarter of the number who had passed through the camp.
In the post-World War II division of Germany, Weimar became part of the Communist German Democratic Republic.
Day 4 – Thursday 14th October 2026 – Weimar
The Ilm river flows through Weimar and alongside the river is an extensive park. The landscaping of the park was done in the late 18th century in the style of an English garden, influenced by Goethe. As we had done in Kassel the previous day, we went for a walk in the park before the attractions we wished to visit had opened for the day.
Our first visit was to Goethe’s house, located in the Frauenplan, when it opened at 10am. I remember visiting this house on my previous visit to Weimar in 1985. Goethe lived in the house from 1782 until he died there in 1832, aged 82. You can tour the rooms, which are furnished as they would have been when Goethe was there, including his bedroom with the armchair in which he died. Adjoining the house is the Goethe National Museum, which describes Goethe’s life and works. Goethe is a national icon in Germany, probably more so than Shakespeare is in England. As well as his literary works, Goethe also had an interest in a wide variety of other subjects. He was an amateur scientist, developing theories in many areas, many of which turned out to be incorrect. He travelled to Italy for two years between 1786 to 1788 and became obsessed with Classicism. His personal life was complicated – he had many affairs and infatuations (not always reciprocated), including proposing marriage to an 18 year old in Bohemia when he was 70. He only married the mother of his children 16 years after his first child was born. The more I learnt about Goethe, the more I thought that, despite his literary genius, that he would be considered a bit of bore and a bully in today’s society, wishing to impose his views on everyone around him.
From the Goethe House and Museum we went back to the Park an der Ilm to visit the Goethe Garden House. This small cottage on the edge of the park is where Goethe lived when he first came to Weimar in 1776. It is far less spacious than the house on the Frauenplan to which he moved six years later.
Just outside the park, near Goethe’s Garden House is the Haus am Horn. This domestic residence was built for the Bauhaus exhibition held in Weimar in 1923. The following year it was sold and it became a private home until 1998. The modifications to the original design were removed and it opened to the public in 2017. Little of the original furniture remains, but it still retains a futuristic feel.
Across the park is the Roman House. This was built under Goethe’s supervision as a retreat for Duke Karl August, although Goethe and Karl August had disagreements over its interior decoration and some additions to the outside of the building, which Goethe thought were not in keeping with his neo-Classical vision.
There is a network of tunnels under Weimar. You can explore a limited section of them by yourself or take a guided tour if you wish to go further. We just chose to explore by ourselves. The tunnels have in different times been used as a brewery and as an air raid shelter.
Once we had left the tunnels it was a short walk to Weimar’s Historic Cemetery, which contains the Ducal Vault, built in the 1820s to be the burial place of the rulers of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. The ground floor is a chapel, whose star patterned ceiling decoration is modelled on that in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna, where I had been only a few weeks earlier. The coffins are contained in the lower level crypt. In addition to the coffins of the royal family members, there are two coffins near the entrance for Goethe and Schiller. However, Schiller’s coffin is now empty. After Goethe was interred in the vault, it was decided to move Schiller’s remains there from where he had been buried over 20 years earlier in the Kassengewölbe Mausoleum in St. Jacob’s Cemetery. When they tried to exhume Schiller’s body, the remains had become mixed with those also interred in the same mausoleum and they identified Schiller by the shape of his skull. In 2006, the remains in the Ducal vault were DNA tested and it was shown that the coffin contained bones from four different people and that none of the remains could be Schiller’s.
At the rear of the Ducal Vault is a Russian Orthodox chapel. This was built in 1860 to be the resting place of Duchess Maria Pavlovna, the wife of Duke Karl Friedrich, so that she could be buried on ‘Russian soil’, as she was the sister of Czar Alexander I of Russia. There is a connecting passage between the two chapels to unite the pair in death. The Orthodox chapel is sumptuously decorated, but as is normal in Orthodox churches, no photography was allowed inside.
Our final visit of our first full day in Weimar was to the House of the Weimar Republic, opposite the Deutsches National Theatre where the Weimar Constitution was crafted in 1919 and which is still used as a theatre to this day. The House of the Weimar Republic is a museum devoted to telling the history of Germany under the Weimar Constitution from 1919 until it was largely abolished by Hitler in 1933. The final section of the permanent exhibition also poses questions about the threats to democracy around the world today.
That evening we fancied a break from traditional German food, so tried a couple of well reviewed pizzerias, but both were full when we arrived. Instead, we went to a Caucasian restaurant where I had Lobio (a dish made from beans) to start with. For main course, I had lamb chops – these were served skewered on a lethal looking sword and I had to be careful not to impale any of the nearby diners while trying to remove the meat.
Day 5 – Friday 15th October 2026 – Weimar
As is our usual practice, we went for a walk before the places we wished to visit had opened. This took us through the Bauhaus University of Weimar, the place were the Bauhaus School had been founded in 1919.
We then headed to to the Bauhaus Museum located in a modern building north of the city centre. Over three floors this describes the history of the Bauhaus movement and contains examples of Bauhaus designed furniture and artefacts. The top floor highlights the leading figures of Bauhaus including its founder Walter Gropius and the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Near the Bauhaus Museum is Weimar’s City Museum. Had our train to Weimar not been delayed, we had intended to visit this museum on the Wednesday afternoon when we first arrived in Weimar. There is an introductory film about the history of the city, with exhibitions over two floors covering Weimar’s history up until the fall of communism in 1989, although the coverage of Weimar in communist times is fairly sparse.
Our next visit was to the Schiller House, where the playwright and poet Friedrich Schiller lived from 1802 until his premature death in 1805 at the age of 45. His widow Charlotte lived in the house for another 20 years. Unlike Goethe, Schiller came from a poor background and had to write to maintain his standard of living. He eventually became a close friend of Goethe’s, although their initial relationship was rather frosty. The main living space of the Schiller family was on the first floor of the residence. The building is on a shopping street in the centre of Weimar, but in Schiller’s day it was on the edge of the city with views of fields in one direction.
The main church in Weimar is dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul. It is also known as the Stadtkirche or Herderkirche. The latter name refers to the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, who was the church’s superintendent in the 18th century. Herder lived nearby and you can visit his former garden behind the church. The present building of the Stadtkirche dates from around 1500, although it was badly damaged by bombing in World War II. The church has a superb altarpiece painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder.
Near to the Stadtkirche is the small Kirms-Krackow House, whose first floor rooms are furnished in the Biedermeier style, typical of bourgeois families in the 19th century.
The Stadtschloss in Weimar is on the edge of the Park an der Ilm. At the time of our visit it had only just partially reopened after being closed for extensive renovations, but the majority of the building still remained out of bounds. It served as the principal residence of the Dukes of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. The area that had reopened contained the castle’s small art gallery, which included three paintings by Caspar David Friedrich.
Duchess Anna Amalia ruled as regent of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach until her son Karl August became of age. Shortly before the end of her regency in 1775 she moved to the Wittumspalais (Widow’s Palace) in the centre of Weimar and continued to live here until her death in 1807. During this period she was a major patron of poets and musicians, who she regularly invited to the Wittumspalais. Anna Amalia was also a notable composer herself. In touring the Wittumspalais you can see her private quarters, as well as the rooms used for entertaining. Unfortunately, at the time of our visit the large Festsaal ballroom on the top floor was closed for conservation.
That evening, being a Friday, we had booked a table for dinner. It was a good job that we had, as during our time in the restaurant people without reservations were being turned away. The restaurant where we ate was once the residence of Karoline Jagemann, an actress who was the mistress of Duke Karl August with whom she had three children. I dined on onion soup followed by a casserole which according to the menu was lamb, but tasted like beef to me.
After dinner we continued a walk to see the outside of of number of places that we had not had time to visit in Weimar, including the Anna Amalia Library and the Red and Yellow palaces.
Weimar had been a fascinating place to visit with so many facets to its history. In our two full days in the city we had got full value from the Weimar Cards that we had purchased, but nonetheless there were many places that we did not have time to visit. You could easily spend a week in Weimar if you wanted to see everything it had to offer.
[To be continued – coming next: our travels in the Czech Republic and our return via Regensburg.]