Germany · Saxony
Leipzig
The city where Bach wrote his cantatas and where, in 1989, Monday prayers turned into the marches that finished East Germany.
Leipzig is Saxony's biggest city and Germany's least pompous cultural heavyweight, a trade-fair town that grew rich on merchants and printed books. Bach spent his last twenty-seven years as cantor at the Thomaskirche and is buried under its chancel floor. In 1989 the Monday peace prayers at the Nikolaikirche grew into marches of seventy thousand people that broke the East German state without a shot fired. The centre is a warren of covered arcades, the old industrial west is now galleries and canal-side bars, and flooded coal pits south of town have turned into beaches.
Suggested stay
2–4 days
Language
German
Currency
EUR
Timezone
UTC+2
Why you'll love Leipzig
Bach He worked at the Thomaskirche for twenty-seven years and is buried in its chancel, the boys' choir he directed still sings there most weeks, and the Gewandhaus orchestra dates from his lifetime.
The Peaceful Revolution The Nikolaikirche prayers grew into a march of seventy thousand that the state did not dare stop, and two unflinching museums in the centre tell how it was watched.
Arcades The fair city left a lattice of glass-roofed passages and courtyards through the Altstadt, so you can cross the centre under cover, past the cellar tavern Goethe put into Faust.
The west Plagwitz turned a dead cotton mill into a serious contemporary-art complex, with a canal to paddle and rents cheap enough to keep the studios and bars arriving.
Best time to visit
Apr-Oct
14-25° days
51.341° N, 12.375° E
UTC+2 · Europe/Berlin
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Weather & when to go to Leipzig
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-Oct
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When to avoid Leipzig
January and February are cold, grey and dark by mid-afternoon, with the lakes and beer gardens out of play, though the concert and opera season runs right through them. December is the same weather with the Christmas market on the Markt, which has run since the fifteenth century. Rooms also disappear around the spring book fair and the Whitsun goth gathering.
Top things to do in Leipzig
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Thomaskirche - Bach's church and the boys' choir
culture arts history 👍 PopularBach was cantor here from 1723 until he died in 1750, writing a cantata most weeks for the choir he trained. His grave is a plain bronze slab in the chancel, moved here after the war. The Thomanerchor, founded in 1212, still sings the Friday and Saturday motets and the Sunday service when it is not away on tour.
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Nikolaikirche - where the Monday demonstrations began
history culture arts 👍 PopularAn oddly beautiful church, gothic outside and pale pink neoclassical inside, with columns that open into palm fronds. From 1982 it held a Monday peace prayer, open to anyone; by autumn 1989 the crowd spilling out of it filled the ring road. Bach premiered the St John Passion here too. A column outside the door marks the marches.
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Voelkerschlachtdenkmal - the Battle of the Nations monument
history 👍 PopularA ninety-one metre lump of granite and concrete on the southern edge of town, raised in 1913 on the field where four empires broke Napoleon a century earlier. Inside is a crypt of stone guardians and a domed hall built for echo rather than comfort; outside, a long reflecting pool called the Lake of Tears. Stairs climb to the top.
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Runde Ecke and the Zeitgeschichtliches Forum - the GDR up close
history ⭐ Highly recommendedThe Round Corner was the Stasi's district headquarters, and the museum inside it is deliberately unrestored: steaming machines for opening post, jars of scent samples taken from suspects, shredded files. The Forum of Contemporary History a few streets away tells the wider story of the divided country and the revolution that ended it, and takes no entry charge.
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Spinnerei - a cotton mill full of galleries
culture arts off beaten path ⭐ Highly recommendedOnce the largest cotton mill on the continent, now twenty-odd brick halls in Plagwitz given over to galleries, studios and workshops. Neo Rauch and the painters loosely grouped as the New Leipzig School worked out of here, and Halle 14 runs the non-commercial exhibitions. Courtyards are open on ordinary days; gallery openings turn the whole site into an evening.
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Maedlerpassage and Auerbachs Keller - arcades and Faust's tavern
history culture artsThe grandest of the covered passages that thread the Altstadt, built for the fairs when merchants wanted their stock and their customers out of the weather. Down its steps is Auerbachs Keller, a wine cellar since the sixteenth century and the setting for a scene in Goethe's Faust; bronze figures at the entrance rub shiny. Specks Hof and Barthels Hof carry on the same trick nearby.
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Augustusplatz - Gewandhaus, opera house and the Panorama Tower
culture arts scenicThe city's big open square, with the opera at one end and the modernist Gewandhaus at the other, home to an orchestra founded in 1743 that also plays for the opera and the Thomaskirche. Behind it the City-Hochhaus, shaped like a half-open book, has a viewing terrace and the best look at how flat the surrounding country is.
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Museum der bildenden Kuenste - a glass cube of Old Masters and moderns
culture artsA stark glass block dropped into the middle of town, holding Cranach, Dutch painting, Beckmann and the Leipzig painters, plus a hall of Max Klinger's sculpture including his marble and ivory Beethoven. The Grassi complex out by the ring is the counterpart: applied arts, ethnography and one of the great historic collections of musical instruments.
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Bach-Museum, Mendelssohn House and Schumann House
culture arts historyThree composer houses within a short walk. The Bach-Museum opposite the Thomaskirche is the strongest, with original manuscripts and a room where you can pull individual instruments out of a cantata. Mendelssohn's apartment is the only one of his homes left standing and still holds Sunday matinees; the Schumann house is where Robert and Clara lived as newlyweds.
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Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse - the Karli, eating and drinking
nightlife music foodThe long street running south out of the centre, known to everyone as the Karli, and the densest run of bars, kitchens and late cafes in the city. It gets scruffier and more student-heavy the further south you go towards Connewitz. Around the corner the Bayerischer Bahnhof, the oldest surviving terminus station building anywhere, is now a brewery.
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Karl-Heine-Kanal - paddling the industrial west
adventure off beaten pathA nineteenth-century industrialist cut this canal through Plagwitz to serve his factories, and it now runs past converted mills, iron bridges and beer gardens. Canoes and kayaks are the way to see it, and the water carries on into the floodplain forest and eventually towards the lakes. Walking or cycling the towpath works nearly as well.
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Panometer - a 360-degree panorama in a gasometer
culture artsYadegar Asisi hangs enormous circular painted panoramas inside a disused gas holder in the south of the city, viewed from a scaffold tower in the middle as the lighting cycles through a day. Subjects rotate every year or two, from Amazon rainforest to ancient Rome to Leipzig itself in 1813. It is a strange, hypnotic hour.
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Leipzig Zoo - Gondwanaland under glass
nature wildlifeOne of the oldest zoos in Germany and among the most ambitious in its rebuilding, laid out as continents rather than cages. Gondwanaland is the headline: a tropical hall the size of several football pitches, humid enough to fog your camera, with a boat channel running through it. The ape enclosures are the other reason people rate it.
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Gose and Leipziger Lerche - the local table
foodGose is the city's own beer, a cloudy sour wheat brew made with salt and coriander, nearly extinct twice and now poured again in a handful of pubs. Leipziger Lerche is a shortcrust tartlet with marzipan and jam, invented after the trade in roasted songbirds was banned in the 1870s. Leipziger Allerlei is the vegetable dish everyone's grandmother argues about.
Best areas to stay in Leipzig
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Zentrum
First-time visitors $$$Arcades and sights inside the ring
Explore hotels in Zentrum →
Suedvorstadt
Eating and going out $$Student streets around the Karli strip
Explore hotels in Suedvorstadt →
Waldstrassenviertel
Quiet and leafy $$Grand tenement quarter by the park
Explore hotels in Waldstrassenviertel →
Plagwitz
Creative long stays $Converted mills, canal, art studios
Explore hotels in Plagwitz →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Leipzig
Getting to & around Leipzig
Getting there
Fly into LEJ and ride the S-Bahn about a quarter of an hour to the Hauptbahnhof, or arrive by fast train from Berlin, Frankfurt or Munich.
Flight
Leipzig/Halle Airport (LEJ)
About eighteen kilometres northwest, with a rail station built into the terminal complex: S-Bahn line S5 and the faster S5X run through the city tunnel to the Hauptbahnhof in roughly a quarter of an hour. Passenger routes are thin, because the airport mostly earns its living on freight, so plenty of visitors fly into Berlin or Frankfurt and finish by train.
Train
Leipzig Hauptbahnhof
Among the largest stations in Europe by floor area, with a shopping arcade under the concourse. Roughly an hour and a quarter from Berlin, about an hour from Dresden and Erfurt, direct to Munich and Frankfurt.
Coach
Beside the Hauptbahnhof
Long-distance buses from across Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic use the stops on the east side of the main station.
Drive
Autobahns from Berlin, Dresden, Munich and the west all meet on the ring around the city. The Altstadt is largely pedestrianised, so aim for a garage on the ring.
Getting around
Tram
The backbone of the city and one of the biggest networks in Germany, radiating from the Hauptbahnhof to every district a visitor wants.
TBC
S-Bahn
Since the city tunnel opened, suburban trains run under the Altstadt, which is the quick way to the airport, Halle and the southern lakes.
TBC
Bus
Fills in the outer suburbs and takes over at night when the trams thin out.
TBC
Cycling
Flat, compact and heavily cycled, with car-free routes along the Karl-Heine canal and through the floodplain forest to the lakes.
TBC
Walking
The Altstadt sits inside a ring you can walk around in about an hour, and nearly every central sight is within it.
Free
Day trips from Leipzig
Leipziger Neuseenland
Half dayFlooded coal-pit lakes
The open-cast lignite pits dug through the twentieth century south of the city have been flooded into a chain of lakes with sand beaches, sailing clubs and a whitewater course at Markkleeberg. Cospudener See is the closest and busiest. Locks and channels now link several lakes to each other and part-way back into the city's canals.
Getting there
bus | train
About 30 min by tram to Cospudener See, or S-Bahn to Markkleeberger See
Halle (Saale)
Half dayHandel's home town
Leipzig's older and grittier neighbour, where Handel was born and where salt made the town rich enough to crowd five towers onto its market square. The state prehistory museum holds the Nebra Sky Disc, the oldest known image of the cosmos, and Halle-Neustadt across the river is a whole socialist new town built for chemical workers.
Getting there
train
About 35 min by S-Bahn, or half that on a fast train
Naumburg
Half dayCathedral and wine valley
The cathedral earned its UNESCO listing largely for one room: the west choir, where an anonymous sculptor known as the Naumburg Master carved twelve life-size founder figures around 1250, among them the Uta whose face has been borrowed by art historians and animators ever since. The Saale and Unstrut valleys around it grow some of Germany's most northerly wine.
Getting there
train
Around 40 min by regional train
Lutherstadt Wittenberg
Half dayReformation town
Luther posted his ninety-five theses on the door of the Castle Church here in 1517 and is buried inside it. His house, a former friary, is the largest Reformation museum anywhere; the town church holds a Cranach altarpiece, and Cranach the Elder ran his workshop, print shop and apothecary on the market square.
Getting there
train
About 40 min by fast train
Dresden
Full dayBaroque capital
The Saxon capital and the aesthetic opposite of Leipzig: a rebuilt baroque riverfront, the Frauenkirche raised out of its own rubble, and treasuries of Old Masters and cut stones assembled by electors with money to burn. The sandstone gorges of Saxon Switzerland are another forty minutes upriver if you stretch it to two days.
Getting there
train
A little over an hour each way by train
A little history of Leipzig
Leipzig sits where two medieval trade roads crossed, and most of the rest follows from that. Imperial fair privileges granted in 1497 drew merchants, and merchants drew printers: by the eighteenth century the city ran the German book trade, and had a university, an auction house and a burgher class rich enough to pay for music. Bach took the cantor's post at the Thomaskirche in 1723 and stayed until he died. Mendelssohn later ran the Gewandhaus orchestra and founded the conservatory, and Wagner, Schumann and Clara Wieck all belong to the city too.
In October 1813 four armies beat Napoleon on the fields south of town in the largest battle Europe had yet seen. Bombing in 1943 gutted much of the centre, and the East German state let the rest decay while the fair kept running as its shop window to the West. From 1982 a Monday peace prayer at the Nikolaikirche drew a growing crowd, and on 9 October 1989 seventy thousand people walked the ring road unopposed. The Wall fell a month later. The city then lost a fifth of its population westwards before the empty mills and tenements made it cheap enough to pull people back.
First recorded as urbs Libzi in the chronicle of Thietmar of Merseburg.
The university is founded by masters and students walking out of Prague.
Emperor Maximilian grants imperial trade-fair privileges, making Leipzig a fair city.
Bach becomes cantor at the Thomasschule and holds the post until his death in 1750.
Napoleon is defeated at the Battle of the Nations on the southern edge of the city.
The line to Dresden opens as Germany's first long-distance railway.
The Voelkerschlachtdenkmal is dedicated on the battle's hundredth anniversary.
Air raids in December destroy much of the historic centre.
Monday demonstrations at the Nikolaikirche swell to seventy thousand and go unchallenged.
Know before you go
Payment
Cards & cash mixed
English
Widely spoken
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type C / F
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+49
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
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FAQs about Leipzig
▸ When is the best time to visit Leipzig?
April to October, with May, June and September the sweet spot for the parks, the canal and swimming in the lakes. Winter is cold, grey and dark, but it is also when the concert, opera and choral season is at full stretch, which for a lot of visitors is the whole point of coming.
▸ How many days do you need in Leipzig?
Two covers the Altstadt, the Thomaskirche and Nikolaikirche, one of the revolution museums and an evening on the Karli. A third buys Plagwitz and the Spinnerei or a swim at the lakes, and a fourth lets you take Halle, Naumburg or Dresden as a day trip.
▸ Can you hear the Thomanerchor sing?
Usually, yes. The boys' choir sings motets on Friday evening and Saturday afternoon and takes the Sunday service, in the church Bach wrote for. Seats are unreserved and the church fills, so arrive early. The choir tours, so check the schedule before you build a trip around it.
▸ Leipzig or Dresden?
Dresden is the prettier city, with a rebuilt baroque skyline and royal collections. Leipzig is the more lived-in one: less to photograph, more going on, better eating and drinking, and a stronger claim on modern German history. They are an hour apart, so the honest answer is both.
▸ Is Leipzig expensive?
It is one of the cheaper big cities in Germany, noticeably below Munich, Hamburg or Frankfurt for rooms and eating, which is a large part of why artists and students keep arriving. The exceptions are the spring book fair and the Whitsun goth gathering, when accommodation gets scarce and dear.
▸ Where do you see the 1989 story?
Start at the Nikolaikirche, where the Monday prayers were held, then the Runde Ecke, the unrestored Stasi district headquarters a few minutes away. The Zeitgeschichtliches Forum sets both in the wider story of the divided country. All three sit within a short walk inside the ring.
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