Parks of Wörlitz and Collegiate Church

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Parks of Wörlitz

   Prince Leopold III Friedrich Franz of Anhalt-Dessau, a ruler of a small German state in the late eighteenth century, came back from travels in England and Italy and decided to turn his whole principality into a garden. The result, the Garden Realm of Dessau-Wörlitz, is now a World Heritage Site, and the parks of Wörlitz are its heart: an English landscape garden laid out around a lake fed by the Elbe, with canals, bridges, temples, a synagogue built as a temple of tolerance, and the palace at Wörlitz, designed by Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff and regarded as one of the first neoclassical buildings in Germany.

   Read the complete Parks of Wörlitz write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Parks of Wörlitz is where the day begins. Next is Palace Mosigkau.

2. 2. Palace Mosigkau

   Palace Mosigkau is a small Rococo palace on the edge of Dessau, in Saxony-Anhalt, and its story is that of a princess who wanted a house of her own. It was built in the middle of the eighteenth century for Anna Wilhelmine, a daughter of the Prince Leopold I of Anhalt-Dessau, known as the Old Dessauer, a military commander of the Prussian army. She did not marry, and after she died the palace became a noble ladies' foundation, a Damenstift, where unmarried women of good family could live in comfort. Its name sits within the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm, a landscape of palaces and parks created in the age of the Enlightenment, which UNESCO has listed.

   Read the complete Palace Mosigkau write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Palace Mosigkau comes up about 29 km into the recorded legs. Next is Luther's birthplace.

3. 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.

   Read the complete Luther's birthplace write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 96 km into the recorded legs you reach Luther's birthplace. Next is Collegiate Church.

4. 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.

   Read the complete Collegiate Church write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Collegiate Church, about halfway. Next is back through Luther's birthplace.

5. 5. back through Luther's birthplace

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Luther's birthplace write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Luther's birthplace sits at 201 km, about halfway. Next is back through Palace Mosigkau.

6. 6. back through Palace Mosigkau

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Palace Mosigkau write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Palace Mosigkau comes up about 276 km into the recorded legs. Next is Parks of Wörlitz.

7. 7. Parks of Wörlitz

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Parks of Wörlitz write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Parks of Wörlitz closes the day.