The Town Church and House with Balcony access - Peterholzstr.

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. The Town Church

   Wittenberg is a small town on the Elbe, in flat sandy country, and it is the place where the Reformation began. The Town Church of St Mary was the church where Martin Luther preached for decades, and where in 1525 he was married to Katharina von Bora, a former nun. The twin towers rise over the market square, and the interior holds an altarpiece painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder and his workshop, finished in the 1540s, which shows the Lord's Supper, baptism, confession and preaching, illustrating the new Protestant ideas in a way ordinary people could grasp. Luther himself and his friends appear in the paintings.

   Read the complete The Town Church write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   The Town Church is where the day begins. Next is Parks of Wörlitz.

2. 2. 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 comes up about 24 km into the recorded legs. Next is Historical Graveyard Dessau.

3. 3. Historical Graveyard Dessau

   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.

   Read the complete Historical Graveyard Dessau write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   about 44 km into the recorded legs you reach Historical Graveyard Dessau. Next is Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz.

4. 4. Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz

   In the late eighteenth century, a small German principality decided to remake its entire landscape as a work of art. Prince Leopold III Friedrich Franz of Anhalt-Dessau, inspired by travels in England and by the ideas of the Enlightenment, created a vast network of parks, gardens, palaces and estates along the Elbe and Mulde rivers, combining beauty, education and agriculture. The result, the Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz, is one of the earliest and largest landscape gardens in continental Europe, and it was listed by UNESCO in 2000.

   Read the complete Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz, about halfway. Next is House with Balcony access - Peterholzstr., 19 km on.

5. 5. 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.

   Read the complete House with Balcony access - Peterholzstr. write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   House with Balcony access - Peterholzstr. sits at 73 km, about halfway. Next is back through Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz.

6. 6. back through Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   back through Garden Kingdom of Dessau-Wörlitz comes up about 104 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Historical Graveyard Dessau.

7. 7. back through Historical Graveyard Dessau

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Historical Graveyard Dessau write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   about 122 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Historical Graveyard Dessau. Next is back through Parks of Wörlitz.

8. 8. back through 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

   back through Parks of Wörlitz, late in the day. Next is The Town Church.

9. 9. The Town Church

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete The Town Church write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 165 km.