Eisenach Walking Tour

You are standing on Karlsplatz in front of the Nikolaitor, the Nikolai Gate. Eisenach once had five town gates, and this is the only one still standing. It is one of the oldest town gates in Thuringia. It was built around 1170, at about the same time as St Nicholas Church right next to it, and the tower is about twenty-seven metres high. In the Middle Ages, anyone travelling east on the Via Regia, the trade road from Frankfurt am Main to Kraków, left the town through this gate. Until 1832 it was closed every evening. On the side facing the station, two stone figures sit above the gateway. According to the city, they probably show Ludwig the Bearded, the founder of the dynasty of Thuringian landgraves, and the Thuringian lion. They may be older than the gate itself. St Nicholas Church is a Romanesque basilica from the twelfth century. It served the people of Eisenach as their parish church and the Benedictine nuns of St Nicholas Convent as their convent church. In the middle of the square, Martin Luther stands in bronze. Adolf von Donndorf made the statue, and it was unveiled on May 4, 1895. On one relief on the base, Luther sings as a schoolboy in front of a woman. You will hear who she was at the Luther House. Now cross Karlsplatz into Karlstrasse and follow it for about four hundred metres to the market square.

You are standing on the market square. The north side is taken up by the Town Palace, with its baroque front and small dome. Duke Ernst August ordered it built on January 20, 1742. His architect, Gottfried Heinrich Krohne, built existing townhouses into the new palace. Today the building houses the Thuringian Museum and the tourist information office. The town hall with the tower on the east side started out as the town's wine cellar. In 1596 Duke Johann Ernst made Eisenach his residence and took over the old town hall for his chancery, so the town council moved into the wine cellar. On November 12, 1636, a great fire broke out. The town hall burned out, and most of the town's charters burned with it. It was rebuilt by 1641. During restoration work after German reunification, the tower was taken down and restored. In front of the palace, the gilded figure of St George, the town's patron saint, has been fighting the dragon on top of St George's Fountain since 1549. The fountain has not always stood in the same place. In 1933 the market square was renamed "Adolf-Hitler-Platz", and in 1938 the fountain and the Bach monument were moved on the orders of the Nazis, to make more room on the square for their rallies and parades. St George's Church stands on the south side of the square. Walk over to the doorway under the tower.

St George's is Eisenach's main church. In 1221 Landgrave Ludwig the Fourth married Elisabeth, the daughter of the King of Hungary, here. She was later venerated as St Elisabeth. Around 1500 a schoolboy sang in the choir of this church: Martin Luther, who attended the parish school of St George. Twenty years later he came back. On his way home from the Imperial Diet in Worms, he preached here on May 2, 1521. A few days later his prince had him intercepted on the road and hidden for his own safety at the Wartburg, the castle above the town. The Wartburg has a walk of its own. In March 1685 Johann Sebastian Bach was baptised here, at a late Gothic font bearing the date 1503, which still stands in the church. For generations, members of the Bach family made music in this church. If the church is open, you can see the font inside, and in the choir the grave slabs of the Thuringian landgraves. Before you move on, look at the paving in front of the church. A cross of dark stones marks the place where leaders of the Werra Band were beheaded on May 11, 1525. The Werra Band was an army of rebel peasants and craftsmen in the Peasants' War. Among those executed was its captain, Hans Sippel of Vacha. Now walk past the church and head south to Lutherplatz, about one hundred and fifty metres.

In front of you is the Luther House on Lutherplatz. It is one of the oldest surviving half-timbered houses in Thuringia. The so-called Luther rooms inside date from 1356. In 1498 Martin Luder, as he still spelled his name, came to Eisenach, his mother's home town. He went to the Latin school and earned a little extra as a street singer, going from house to house. His first biographer, Johann Mathesius, says that a devout woman liked his singing so much that she took him into her home. This was Ursula Cotta, the wife of the councillor Conrad Cotta. In return for board and lodging, Luther tutored her younger brother, Caspar Schalbe. Around 1500 the Cotta family owned this house, but they owned others in town too. That is why the museum says Luther lived here according to tradition. In the spring of 1501 he left to study at the University of Erfurt. The house has been a museum since 1956. Its permanent exhibition tells the story of Luther's Bible translation, and Ai Weiwei's sculpture "man in a cube" stands in the courtyard. The museum also has a permanent bilingual exhibition on the "Institute for the Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life", known as the "Entjudungsinstitut", which Protestant regional churches founded in Eisenach in 1939. Continue along Schmelzerstrasse to Johannisplatz, a little over three hundred metres.

At number nine Johannisplatz stands a half-timbered house that is easy to walk past. It is just two point zero five metres wide and a little over eight metres high. Locals call it "das Handtuch", the towel. Inside it is even tighter. An adult standing in it can touch both walls at once with outstretched arms. The little terraced house was probably built around the middle of the eighteenth century. It got its present front, with decorated timber framing and Art Nouveau touches, in the early twentieth century. It counts as one of the narrowest houses in Germany, and for a long time people really lived in it. After its last long-term resident died, the German Foundation for Monument Protection, the Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz, took responsibility for the house in 2020, together with the Eisenach monument foundation. The foundation opened it to visitors for the first time. You can only go inside on certain open days, such as Heritage Day in September. There is also a virtual tour on the foundation's website. If you want a photo, step back a few paces into the square. Only then will the whole house, gable and all, fit in the frame. The last stop is a little over three hundred metres away. Walk along Lauchergasse and Lutherstrasse to the Frauenplan, where the Bach House stands.

You have reached the Frauenplan. The half-timbered house in front of you is the Bach House. It opened on May 27, 1907, as the first museum devoted to Johann Sebastian Bach. The oldest part of the house was built in 1456. Bach was born in Eisenach on March 21, 1685, into a family of musicians. He spent the first ten years of his life here. After both his parents died, he moved in 1695 to his elder brother in Ohrdruf. In the nineteenth century people believed this was the house where Bach was born, which is why the museum opened here. It later turned out to be a mistake. Nobody can say for certain today in which house Bach was born. The monument in front of the house is by Adolf von Donndorf, the same sculptor who made the Luther monument on Karlsplatz. It was unveiled on September 28, 1884, in its first spot on the market square in front of St George's Church. It has stood here on the Frauenplan since 1938. Every year on March 21, Bach's birthday is celebrated here. Inside the museum there is a short concert every hour on historic instruments, including two organs from around 1650 and around 1750. This is where the walk ends. The main station is about fifteen minutes away on foot. The Wartburg, up on the hill, will get a walk of its own.