Magdeburg is the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, a city of about 240,000 on the Elbe, and it is worth saying immediately what it is not. It is not a preserved German old town. It was destroyed twice, four hundred years apart, and almost nothing at street level is older than the twentieth century. What survived both times is the building in the first photograph, and it is a genuinely major one: the first Gothic cathedral built on German soil, begun in 1209, holding the tomb of OTTO THE GREAT, the first Holy Roman Emperor. A visitor who arrives expecting Quedlinburg will be disappointed. A visitor who arrives understanding the history will find one of the more interesting cities in eastern Germany.
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What Is Here
THE SACK OF 1631 IS ONE OF THE WORST ATROCITIES IN EUROPEAN HISTORY AND IT HAPPENED HERE. In May of that year, during the Thirty Years War, an imperial army took the Protestant city and in the following days something close to 20,000 of its roughly 25,000 inhabitants were killed and the city burned. The event was notorious across Europe and gave the German language a verb, MAGDEBURGISIEREN, to magdeburgise, meaning to destroy utterly. The city took more than a century to recover its population.
AND THEN IT HAPPENED AGAIN ON 16 JANUARY 1945. A bombing raid burned out the old town, and what was rebuilt afterwards was rebuilt by the GDR: wide avenues, large squares, prefabricated housing and a socialist civic plan. The second photograph is what that produces, a tram on a street built for space rather than for enclosure. It is not picturesque and it is not without interest, and the honest way to see Magdeburg is as a twentieth century city with an eleventh century reason for existing.
THE CATHEDRAL IS THE REASON TO COME AND YOU SHOULD GIVE IT TIME. It is the first building in Germany to be built in the Gothic style, and because construction ran for three centuries you can see the style arriving: Romanesque at the east end, early Gothic rising, late Gothic towers finished in 1520. OTTO THE GREAT, crowned emperor in Rome in 962, is buried in the choir, and the cathedral also holds Ernst Barlach's 1929 MAGDEBURG CENOTAPH, an anti-war memorial so unwelcome to the Nazis that it was removed and hidden. Both are in the same building and the contrast is the point.
THE GREEN CITADEL IS HUNDERTWASSER'S LAST BUILDING AND IT IS GENUINELY STRANGE. Finished in 2005, after the architect's death, it is a pink building with irregular windows, grass and trees on the roof, and no straight lines, standing a few minutes from the cathedral in a city of right angles. The third photograph is the more ordinary modern Magdeburg next to which it sits. Opinions about it locally are divided, which is the correct response to a Hundertwasser.
AND THE ELBE IS BOTH THE SETTING AND AN ENGINEERING EXHIBIT. The riverside parks are the city's best asset in summer, and ten kilometres north the WASSERSTRASSENKREUZ, the Magdeburg Water Bridge, carries the Mittelland Canal over the Elbe on a 918 metre aqueduct, the longest navigable aqueduct in the world, finished in 2003. You can walk across it with barges passing above the river.
When to Go
May to September is the season, in the high teens to mid twenties, with the Elbe parks in use and long northern evenings. July and August can reach the low thirties in a continental heatwave.
Late April and early October are good and quiet. Cool, in the low teens, with the cathedral and the museums the point in either case.
December brings a Christmas market on the Alter Markt, which the wide squares suit, and the cathedral runs Advent concerts that are the best reason to be here in winter.
November to February is cold, grey and continental, around or below freezing, with occasional lying snow and a wind off the flat country. The city is cheap and empty and the cathedral is unheated, which matters more than the outside temperature.
Getting There
Regional and intercity trains from Berlin take about an hour and a half, from Leipzig about an hour and a quarter, from Hanover about an hour and a half. Berlin is the practical air gateway; Leipzig-Halle is closer and smaller.
The city is flat and the tram network is good. The cathedral, the Alter Markt and the Green Citadel are within a twenty minute walk of each other and of the station. The water bridge needs a bus, a bicycle or a car.
Magdeburg is a useful base for the Harz: Quedlinburg is about an hour and a quarter by train and Wernigerode about an hour and three quarters, both of them the preserved old towns this city is not.
Elbe cycle route traffic passes through, and the city is genuinely good for cycling because it is flat and the river paths are continuous.
The Magdeburg Packing List
A cold continental winter, a cold cathedral in any season, a wind off flat country and warm dry summers.
Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women is the right foundation here for a reason specific to the city's single great building: a Gothic cathedral of that size is unheated and holds the winter into May, so you will be at perhaps eight degrees inside for an hour and then on a sunlit square at eighteen. Wool manages that without the clammy stage, and it handles the continental winter properly. From November to March add a heavyweight merino base layer.
A Columbia Fast Trek II fleece across three seasons, and a Marmot PreCip Eco rain jacket, which on the flat Elbe plain is as much a windbreak as a rain layer.
Walking shoes with grip. The city is flat and easy, and the cathedral floor and the older cobbled patches are polished stone that is slick in rain.
Merino glove liners and a merino beanie from October to April, for the cathedral as much as for the street.
Not linked and worth packing: WARM WATERPROOF BOOTS IF YOU COME FOR THE CHRISTMAS MARKET, where standing still on cold stone for two hours is the actual activity and the walking shoes above are not enough, left unlinked because this post is already at our six link limit and the shoes are the more useful entry across the whole year; SOMETHING TO COVER YOUR SHOULDERS for the cathedral, which is an active place of worship; CASH IN EUROS, since eastern German small businesses are less card-friendly than the west; A WATER BOTTLE for the summer, when the city is hotter and drier than the north coast; AND A FOLDING UMBRELLA, usable here because the wind is less fierce than on the Baltic.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
Essential Resources for Women in Magdeburg
Emergency numbers: 112 for police, ambulance and fire, free from any phone including a locked mobile, with operators who will find an English speaker. It is the single number across the whole European Union.
THE REAL CONSIDERATIONS HERE ARE THE WINTER, THE RIVER AND A FACT ABOUT EASTERN GERMANY THAT IS BETTER STATED THAN IMPLIED. Magdeburg is a safe, ordinary German regional capital and the FCDO records German crime at levels comparable to the United Kingdom's, naming mugging, bag-snatching and pickpocketing, which here means the station area and a festival crowd rather than daily life; it also warns about counterfeit currency and advises using banks, ATMs and official exchange offices and checking your change, which matters in a cash-friendly city. GERMANY'S NATIONAL TERRORISM WORDING names markets, places of worship, shopping centres, crowded public spaces and sporting and cultural events, with the FCDO stating that terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Germany, and in this city the crowds that touches are the Christmas market and the cathedral concerts. ON RACISM, SAID PLAINLY BECAUSE IT IS USEFUL RATHER THAN BECAUSE IT IS DRAMATIC: the FCDO notes that there have been racist incidents in Germany and that travellers from ethnic minorities may face them, and the eastern states including this one have a stronger far-right electoral presence than the western ones. In practice a visitor of any background is overwhelmingly likely to have an uneventful trip in a university city of a quarter of a million, and the honest advice is that the risk is of hostility rather than of violence, that it is concentrated around late-night drinking and demonstrations rather than around museums and trams, and that it is worth knowing before arriving rather than after. THE ELBE FLOODS, substantially: the June 2013 flood was the largest in centuries here and the riverside parks and paths are the flood plain by design, so a high-water period closes them and the German weather service and the state flood service publish the levels. WINTER IS CONTINENTAL with lying snow, ice on flat polished pavement and short days, and the commonest visitor injury in any German city is a fall. SUMMER HEATWAVES in a flat inland city reach the low thirties with little shade on the wide squares.
US State Department travel advisory: the Germany advisory. Read the current level there directly rather than relying on a figure printed in any guide.
UK FCDO travel advice: gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/germany, and read the safety and security page rather than only the landing page, because that is where the substance sits.
Main hospital: the Universitatsklinikum Magdeburg is a university hospital with a full emergency department, and the Klinikum Magdeburg also has one, so this is a well-served city medically with Leipzig and Berlin within an hour and a half for anything exceptional. Dial 112 for ambulance and fire and 110 for police, both free from any phone, and 112 works from a mobile with no SIM. Pharmacies post the night and Sunday duty rota on the door under the heading Notdienst. Germany is in the EU, so a UK Global Health Insurance Card or an EU European Health Insurance Card gives you state-provided medically necessary care on the same terms as a resident. That is not the same as free: German healthcare involves patient contributions and the card does not cover repatriation or private treatment, so travel insurance sits on top of it. German hospitals are excellent and English is widely spoken in them, particularly in university cities. An Apotheke, marked with a red A, handles minor problems without an appointment and the duty rota for out-of-hours is posted in the window. Tap water is drinkable everywhere. Dial 112 for an ambulance and 116117 for the non-emergency medical service.
Official health authority: the Robert Koch Institute, Germany's public health body, covers the national health service information and the pharmacy duty rotas
US Embassy: the United States Embassy in Berlin.
Official tourism authority: the German National Tourist Board, covers Saxony-Anhalt and the Harz, and the city tourism office publishes the cathedral opening and service times, the Green Citadel tour times and the Christmas market dates
Takeaways
Destroyed in 1631 and again in 1945. This is a modern city with a medieval cathedral.
The first Gothic cathedral in Germany, and Otto the Great is buried in it.
Hundertwasser's last building is here, and it is pink with trees on the roof.
The world's longest navigable aqueduct carries a canal over the Elbe ten kilometres north.
Solo women safety assessment: Magdeburg is a straightforward and unremarkable place to travel alone. It is a flat, well-connected German regional capital and university city of about 240,000, with a tram network that works, a compact centre, no district a visitor has reason to be in late at night, and eating alone completely ordinary. Germany's crime levels are comparable to the United Kingdom's and the FCDO names mugging, bag-snatching and pickpocketing, which here means the station area and a market crowd; it also warns about counterfeit currency, which matters in a city where small businesses prefer cash. The national terrorism assessment names markets, places of worship and crowded events, touching the Christmas market and the cathedral concerts and little else. ONE THING IS WORTH STATING DIRECTLY RATHER THAN LEAVING TO INFERENCE: the FCDO notes racist incidents in Germany and that travellers from ethnic minorities may encounter them, and the eastern states including this one have a stronger far-right electoral presence than the west. The realistic risk is hostility rather than violence, it is concentrated around late-night drinking and demonstrations rather than around daytime city life, and a visitor is far more likely to have an entirely uneventful trip. THE PHYSICAL RISKS ARE WINTER AND WATER. Ice on flat polished pavement causes more visitor injuries here than anything else, the cathedral is unheated and holds the cold into May, and the Elbe genuinely floods, with the riverside paths being the flood plain by design. 112 REACHES AMBULANCE AND FIRE AND 110 POLICE, and the city has a university hospital with a full emergency department.
Reading On
Magdeburg is the capital of Saxony-Anhalt and the natural base for the Harz, which is where this library goes next. The Quedlinburg packing list and Wernigerode packing list cover the two preserved half-timbered towns an hour or so south, which are everything this city is not and are the right pairing with it. East and south, the Leipzig packing list covers the larger Saxon city an hour and a quarter away and the Dresden packing list the one rebuilt after a comparable raid, which is the closest parallel to Magdeburg's own history. The Erfurt packing list covers the Thuringian capital with its intact medieval centre. Towards Berlin, the Potsdam packing list covers the Prussian palace town and the Berlin packing list the capital an hour and a half east. For the country, the Germany travel guide for women carries the transport, the regions and the seasons in full. For why wool suits an unheated Gothic nave and a sunlit square in the same hour, read the guide to merino wool base layers for women. Every destination we cover is indexed at the travel packing guide for women, and the base layers are at the Roman Trail collection. Up the Elbe in Saxony, the Meissen packing list covers the castle where European porcelain was invented, and southwest in Thuringia the Weimar packing list covers Goethe's town and the camp six kilometres above it.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
