Where to Stay in Leipzig, Saxony

What is Leipzig known for?

Leipzig is known first as a city of music, the place where Johann Sebastian Bach led the choir at St. Thomas Church and where Mendelssohn and Schumann later made their homes. It is a trade-fair city as well. Merchants have gathered here for centuries, and the book trade that grew alongside them left a legacy told at the German Museum of Books and Writing.

The city also carries a civic memory: the peaceful protests around St. Nicholas Church that helped end a divided Germany. Around Leipzig, the Neuseenland lake district fills former mining pits with open water.

What are the main landmarks in Leipzig?

The main landmarks in Leipzig gather around music, faith, and civic memory. St. Thomas Church holds Bach's grave and choir tradition, while St. Nicholas Church anchors the story of the peaceful revolution. The museums run deep.

The Museum der bildenden Künste and the Grassi Museum hold the city's fine and applied art, the Bach-Museum Leipzig and the Mendelssohn-Haus trace its composers, and the Leipzig Zoological Garden and the Panometer add attractions beyond the historic Saxon centre.

What is the history of Leipzig?

Leipzig grew up as a market town at a meeting of old trade roads on the North German Plain, and commerce shaped it long before music did. Fairs made the city rich. From the Middle Ages onward merchants converged on Leipzig, and the trade in books and printing turned it into one of Europe's great publishing centres, a legacy kept at the German Museum of Books and Writing.

Around the churches a musical tradition took hold that would define the place: Johann Sebastian Bach directed the choir at St. Thomas Church, and later Mendelssohn and Schumann drew the wider musical world to the Saxon city. Leipzig also sat at the hinge of larger history. The Battle of the Nations was fought on its outskirts against Napoleon, one of the greatest engagements of its age.

In the twentieth century the city lay within a divided Germany, and in the autumn of 1989 the Monday demonstrations that filled the square outside St. Nicholas Church became a turning point in the peaceful revolution. Reunification followed, and the old fair city reinvented its factories and mining land, the flooded pits south of town growing into the lakes of the Neuseenland that now edge Leipzig's Saxon plain.

Where is Leipzig?

Leipzig lies in the southernmost part of the North German Plain, in the state of Saxony, at the confluence of the White Elster with its tributaries the Pleiße and the Parthe. The land here is flat and low. Floodplain forest threads through the city along the rivers, and to the south the reclaimed mining country has filled with the lakes of the Neuseenland. Berlin lies to the north, and the level Saxon plain spreads open around Leipzig on every side.

What is the climate of Leipzig?

Leipzig has a temperate lowland climate marked by the open exposure of the North German Plain. Winters are cold and grey, colder than the Rhine cities to the west, with frost and occasional snow. Summers turn warm and changeable.

The flat Saxon setting lets weather systems sweep across without much shelter, so dry, bright spells alternate with rain, and the rivers and Neuseenland lakes hold the humidity of the plain.

How do you get to Leipzig?

Getting to Leipzig is easy by rail from across Germany. The Hauptbahnhof, one of Europe's largest terminus stations, sits on fast lines that link the city to Berlin to the north and on toward the rest of Saxony and beyond. An airport serves the region too.

High-speed trains, the autobahn network, and Leipzig/Halle Airport connect the city widely, and local trams and buses tie the Zentrum to the surrounding towns of the Saxon plain.