The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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From Wittenberg it runs 356 km to Wittenberg; allow about 5 h 33 of riding. It goes by way of House with Balcony access - Peterholzstr., Luther's birthplace, Collegiate Church and back through Luther's birthplace. The line favours views over speed.
Scenic road chapters
House with Balcony access - Peterholzstr. → Luther's birthplace
77 km on House with Balcony access - Peterholzstr. → Luther's birthplace.
Chapter facts
Length
77 km
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Luther Hall
Wittenberg's Luther Hall is a big, plain, slightly forbidding building, and that is part of its charm. It began as the Augustinian monastery where Martin Luther lived as a friar, and after the Reformation it became his family home, given to him and to his wife Katharina von Bora, a former nun who ran the household with considerable firmness. You can picture a crowded place: students at the table, guests, children, a brewery's worth of hospitality. Luther taught at the university here, preached in the town church, and, according to tradition, nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the Castle Church in 1517. Wittenberg thus became one of the places where the modern world was argued into being.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Luther Hall is where the day begins. Next is House with Balcony access - Peterholzstr., 57 km on.
2. House with Balcony access - Peterholzstr.
Hannes Meyer, the second director of the Bauhaus, believed that architecture should serve the needs of the people, not the egos of architects, and the five apartment buildings he designed with Bauhaus students in Dessau-Törten in 1929 and 1930 are an expression of that belief. The Laubenganghäuser, houses with balcony access, are three-storey brick buildings with external walkways along the facades giving access to the apartments, a cheap and efficient way to provide affordable housing for workers. The buildings on Peterholzstraße were added to the UNESCO listing of the Bauhaus and its sites in Weimar, Dessau and Bernau in 2017.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
House with Balcony access - Peterholzstr. comes up 57 km in. Next is Luther's birthplace.
3. Luther's birthplace
Martin Luther was born in Eisleben on 10 November 1483, and by an odd twist of fate he died here too, in 1546, while on a visit to settle a dispute between the counts of Mansfeld. The house where he was born was rebuilt after a fire in the seventeenth century and became one of the first museums in Germany dedicated to a single person. Together with the house where he died and the sites in Wittenberg where he lived and taught, it forms the UNESCO site of the Luther Memorials in Eisleben and Wittenberg, listed in 1996. The museum tells the story of Luther's family, his childhood and the beginning of the Reformation, and it has been extended with modern exhibitions.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
113 km in you reach Luther's birthplace. Next is Collegiate Church.
4. Collegiate Church
High on a rock above Quedlinburg stands the Collegiate Church of St Servatius, a heavy Romanesque church that is one of the most important of its kind in Germany. The first church on the hill was connected to the Ottonian kings, and Henry the Fowler, the first king of the East Frankish realm in the early tenth century, was buried here. His widow Mathilda founded a convent of noblewomen on the site, which became powerful, with abbesses who were often relatives of the emperors and ran a small state of their own.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Luther Hall closes the day.
Leg by leg
Luther Hall to House with Balcony access - Peterholzstr.
Luther Hall → House with Balcony access - Peterholzstr. is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Luther's birthplace to Collegiate Church
Luther's birthplace → Collegiate Church is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Collegiate Church to back through Luther's birthplace
Collegiate Church → back through Luther's birthplace is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Luther's birthplace to back through House with Balcony access - Peterholzstr.
back through Luther's birthplace → back through House with Balcony access - Peterholzstr. is 77 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.