Weimar has a way of making people feel they have walked into a library. Goethe and Schiller lived and worked here, Bach and Liszt played here, and in 1919 the German National Assembly met in the town to write the constitution of the Weimar Republic. That same year Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar, merging the old art school and the school of applied arts into something new. The Haus Am Horn, built in 1923 for the school's first big exhibition, is the only Bauhaus building that was actually erected in Weimar itself.
The house is small and cubic, designed mainly by the painter Georg Muche, with a square plan, a taller central room lit from above and the other rooms arranged around it. It was a model home, with a fitted kitchen and built-in furniture, intended to show how modern living could be efficient and bright. The Bauhaus sites in Weimar and Dessau are listed by UNESCO, and the house is a short walk from the park along the Ilm river, where Goethe's garden house stands among meadows.
The town is a place of about sixty-five thousand people, with fuel, restaurants and cafés, and a compact historic centre where parking is tight but possible. The Thuringian bratwurst and a glass of Weimar's local beer are the customary lunch. A few kilometres north, on the Ettersberg hill, lies the Buchenwald memorial, a sober reminder of the darkest chapter of German history, and a visit adds important context to the cultural brightness of the town.
Roads out of Weimar lead into rolling Thuringian farmland, with long gentle bends, wide views and little traffic, and the Thuringian Forest to the southwest offers more demanding hills. On weekdays the countryside is peaceful, and the summer evenings are long. Spring and early autumn are comfortable, and winter is cold with some snow. Morning light on the white walls of the Haus Am Horn is lovely, and the small garden around it is pleasant for a rest.