Weimar is a town of about 65,000 people in Thuringia and it carries a weight entirely out of proportion to its size. Goethe lived here for fifty seven years and Schiller for the last three of his life; Herder and Wieland were here; Liszt ran the music; the Bauhaus was founded here in 1919; and the constitution of the German republic of 1919 to 1933 was written in this town, which is why that republic is called the Weimar Republic. Two separate UNESCO World Heritage listings cover it. IT ALSO SITS SIX KILOMETRES FROM BUCHENWALD, one of the largest concentration camps in Germany, where roughly 56,000 people were murdered, and the camp was placed on the hill above the town deliberately. Both of those things are Weimar. A visit that takes in one and not the other is not really a visit to this place.
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What Is Here
THE GOETHE HOUSE IS THE CENTRE OF IT AND IT IS THE REAL HOUSE. He lived on the Frauenplan from 1782 and the rooms are substantially as he left them in 1832, including the small plain study and the bed he died in, which after the public rooms is startling. The adjoining Goethe National Museum carries the collections. BOOK AHEAD: entry is by timed slot and it sells out in season. Schiller's house, a few minutes away, is smaller, later and worth the half hour.
THE DUCHESS ANNA AMALIA LIBRARY IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ROOM IN THE TOWN AND ACCESS IS LIMITED. The Rococo Hall of 1761 holds about 40,000 volumes on three oval galleries and it is visited in small timed groups with a strict daily cap. It burned in 2004 and was restored. If you want to see it, book it before you book anything else here.
THE SECOND PHOTOGRAPH IS THE MARKT AND THE TOWN IS SMALL ENOUGH TO EXHAUST ON FOOT. The historic centre is about fifteen minutes across, with the Markt, the Theaterplatz and its Goethe and Schiller monument, the Herderplatz and the Frauenplan all within that. The ILM PARK, Goethe's own landscape park with his garden house in it, runs along the river from the edge of the centre and is the best thing to do here with an unstructured hour.
THE BAUHAUS BEGAN HERE AND LEFT AFTER FOUR YEARS. Walter Gropius founded it in 1919 in the art school buildings by Henry van de Velde, which still stand and are part of the UNESCO listing, and political pressure from the Thuringian state drove it to Dessau in 1925. The BAUHAUS MUSEUM WEIMAR, opened in 2019, holds the world's oldest Bauhaus collection. The HAUS AM HORN, the movement's first experimental house, is a short walk away and is the one building here that looks like what people mean by Bauhaus.
AND BUCHENWALD IS A BUS RIDE AND IT IS FREE. The memorial on the Ettersberg is open all year, entry costs nothing, and the site is large: the camp grounds, the crematorium, the former SS area, the quarry and an extensive permanent exhibition. Allow three to four hours and understand that the walk between the parts is exposed. It was liberated on 11 April 1945. After 1945 the Soviet occupation authorities ran it as an internment camp until 1950, where more than 7,000 further people died, and the memorial documents that too. GO EARLY IN THE DAY AND DO NOT PLAN ANYTHING AFTERWARDS.
When to Go
May to September is the season, in the high teens to mid twenties, with the Ilm Park at its best and the house museums busy. Book the Goethe house and the library well ahead in July and August.
Late April to early June and September are the best weeks. Cooler, quieter, and the timed-entry slots easier to get.
December's Christmas market on the Markt is one of Thuringia's better ones, and the town's indoor attractions make winter genuinely workable here in a way it is not in a scenery destination.
November to March is cold and continental, around or below freezing, with lying snow some weeks. The Ettersberg above the town is colder, windier and more exposed than Weimar itself, which matters for Buchenwald; see the packing list.
Getting There
Trains from Erfurt take about fifteen minutes, from Leipzig about an hour, from Berlin about two and a quarter, from Frankfurt about two and a half on the high speed line. Erfurt is the nearest airport and small; Leipzig-Halle, Frankfurt and Berlin are the practical ones.
The town is walkable and the station is a ten minute walk from the centre. Nothing in the historic core needs transport.
Buchenwald is reached by city bus 6 from the station and the Goetheplatz, about fifteen minutes, running roughly hourly and less often out of season. Check the return times before you go up, because being stranded on an exposed hill in February is unpleasant.
Weimar works well as a base for Thuringia, with Erfurt fifteen minutes away and the Thuringian Forest within an hour.
The Weimar Packing List
A cold exposed hill above a sheltered town, unheated historic interiors, continental winters and a great deal of walking on hard floors.
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, and the reason is Buchenwald as much as the town. THE ETTERSBERG IS AN EXPOSED PLATEAU SEVERAL HUNDRED METRES ABOVE WEIMAR AND IT IS NOTICEABLY COLDER AND WINDIER, the site is large and almost entirely outdoors, and you will be walking slowly and standing still for long periods, which is the condition in which people get genuinely cold. Wool is the layer that handles standing still. 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 Ettersberg is a windproof layer first and a rain layer second.
Walking shoes with grip. The town is cobbled and the camp grounds are gravel, cinder and uneven ground over a large area.
Merino glove liners and a merino beanie from October to April, and worth having on the hill in May.
Not linked and worth packing: A WATER BOTTLE AND SOMETHING TO EAT FOR BUCHENWALD, because catering on the site is limited and you will be there for hours; A SMALL BAG RATHER THAN A LARGE ONE for the house museums, several of which require you to leave rucksacks and some of which have small lockers; SOMETHING TO COVER YOUR SHOULDERS for the churches; AND CASH IN EUROS, since eastern German small businesses are less card-friendly than the west.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
Essential Resources for Women in Weimar
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 PRACTICAL RISKS HERE ARE COLD, GROUND AND THE EMOTIONAL WEIGHT OF ONE SITE, AND THE LAST OF THOSE IS WORTH TREATING AS A REAL CONSIDERATION. Buchenwald is free, open all year and extremely demanding, the exhibition is unsparing, and the grounds are large and exposed. Visitors routinely underestimate how they will feel afterwards. Go in the morning, allow three to four hours, do not schedule anything for the rest of the day, do not go on the day you leave, and if you are travelling with children the memorial itself recommends a minimum age of around fourteen for the exhibition. THE ETTERSBERG IS COLDER AND WINDIER THAN THE TOWN BY A MARGIN THAT SURPRISES PEOPLE, and the commonest physical problem up there is simply being underdressed while standing still. In town, THE GROUND IS THE EVERYDAY HAZARD: cobbled lanes and polished historic floors, slick in rain and genuinely dangerous in ice, and falls are the commonest visitor injury in German old towns. 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; in a town this size that touches the Christmas market and the festivals. CRIME IS AT UK LEVELS, with mugging, bag-snatching and pickpocketing named, which here means a market crowd and little else, and the counterfeit currency warning applies where cash is preferred. ON RACISM AND ON THE FAR RIGHT, STATED PLAINLY BECAUSE OF WHERE YOU ARE: the FCDO notes racist incidents in Germany and that travellers from ethnic minorities may encounter them, and Thuringia has one of the strongest far-right electoral presences in the country. A visitor is overwhelmingly likely to have an uneventful trip; the realistic risk is hostility rather than violence and it clusters around late-night drinking and demonstrations. It is also worth knowing that GERMAN LAW CRIMINALISES HOLOCAUST DENIAL AND THE DISPLAY OF NAZI SYMBOLS, which is not a trap for an ordinary visitor and is the legal context in which this town's memorial work happens. WINTER IS CONTINENTAL with lying snow and short days.
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 Sophien- und Hufeland-Klinikum in Weimar has an emergency department, with Erfurt's Helios Klinikum fifteen minutes away by train and Jena's university hospital about thirty minutes for anything requiring specialist care, so this is a well-served part of Germany. 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.
The authority to check before you go: the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation publishes the memorial's opening hours, the guided tour times and languages, the bus connections and the current state of the site, and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar publishes the timed-entry rules and daily caps for the Goethe house, the Anna Amalia Library and the other house museums, which is where the numbers that actually constrain a trip here are kept.
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 Thuringia, and the city tourism office publishes the museum timed-entry slots, the Weimar Card coverage and the bus timetable to Buchenwald, which thins outside the summer
Takeaways
Book the Goethe house and the Anna Amalia Library before anything else. Both are capped.
Buchenwald is six kilometres away, free, and takes a morning. Plan nothing after it.
The Ettersberg is colder and windier than the town. Dress for standing still outdoors.
Two UNESCO listings in a town of 65,000, and the Bauhaus started here in 1919.
Solo women safety assessment: Weimar is an easy and quiet place to travel alone, and it is a destination that suits solo travel particularly well because almost everything here is a museum, a house or a library visited at your own pace. The historic centre is fifteen minutes across, the town is a university and cultural town with a large student population, there is no district to avoid, and eating alone is completely ordinary. Germany's crime levels are comparable to the United Kingdom's and the FCDO names mugging, bag-snatching and pickpocketing, which in a town this size means a market crowd. The national terrorism assessment names markets and crowded cultural events. TWO THINGS ARE WORTH KNOWING IN ADVANCE. The first is that the FCDO notes racist incidents in Germany and that travellers from ethnic minorities may encounter them, and Thuringia has one of the strongest far-right electoral presences in the country; the realistic risk is hostility rather than violence, clustered around late-night drinking and demonstrations, and a visitor is far more likely to have an uneventful trip. The second is not a safety matter but belongs here anyway: BUCHENWALD IS SIX KILOMETRES AWAY AND IT IS HARD. Go in the morning, allow three to four hours, and do not schedule anything afterwards, because people consistently underestimate the effect. The hill it stands on is several hundred metres above the town and is colder, windier and more exposed, so the practical risk up there is being underdressed while standing still. In town, ice and polished cobbles cause more injuries than anything else. 112 REACHES AMBULANCE AND FIRE AND 110 POLICE, and Erfurt and Jena hospitals are both within half an hour.
Reading On
Weimar is in Thuringia and this library covers the surrounding states closely. The Erfurt packing list is the natural companion, fifteen minutes away by train, the state capital with the intact medieval centre Weimar does not have, and the Leipzig packing list covers the Saxon city an hour east. Further into Saxony, the Dresden packing list and Meissen packing list cover the Elbe cities. North, the Quedlinburg packing list and Wernigerode packing list cover the preserved Harz towns and the Magdeburg packing list the Elbe cathedral city. For the capital and the Prussian palaces, the Berlin packing list and Potsdam packing list cover both. South in Franconia, the Bamberg packing list and Nuremberg packing list cover the UNESCO town and the city whose own twentieth century history makes it this town's closest counterpart. For the country, the Germany travel guide for women carries the transport, the regions and the seasons in full. For why wool is the layer that handles standing still outdoors in the cold, 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.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
