Dessau is best known for the Bauhaus, but the city's older story is one of parks and princes. The Historical Graveyard, laid out in the Enlightenment spirit of the late eighteenth century, was designed as a landscape garden as much as a burial ground, with winding paths, old trees and monuments set among greenery. Prince Leopold III Friedrich Franz of Anhalt-Dessau, who created the nearby Garden Realm of Dessau-Wörlitz, believed that gardens could educate and uplift, and the cemetery follows the same idea: a place to walk and reflect.
The Garden Realm is a UNESCO World Heritage Site stretching along the Elbe and Mulde rivers, one of the earliest and finest English-style landscapes on the Continent, with palaces, bridges, temples and even a miniature volcano. The graveyard sits within the city, a quiet green space among the tombs of local families, with mausoleums and ironwork, and moss growing over the stone. It is a sombre but rewarding stop, best visited with respect and a slow pace.
Dessau is a city of about seventy-seven thousand, and one that suffered heavy bombing in 1945, so much of its character is post-war, with wide streets and plain buildings alongside surviving gems such as Walter Gropius's Bauhaus building of 1926. The city was also the home of Hugo Junkers's aircraft factory, and Moses Mendelssohn, the philosopher, was born here in 1729. Fuel, restaurants and shops are plentiful, and the cafés near the Bauhaus are a good place for a pause.
The surrounding countryside is flat, wide and green, with the Elbe floodplain forests and long levee roads that run for kilometres under tall oaks. These are relaxing rides rather than thrilling ones, with straight lines, big skies and plenty of birdlife, including white storks and cranes, and bicycles are everywhere. Spring blossom and autumn mist over the river are the highlights, and summer evenings are warm and long. Elbe floods can close low roads in wet years, so check before you set off.