Merseburg, Germany

Merseburg sits on the Saale River in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, with a population of roughly 33,000 and a recorded history that begins in 802. The city's 1015 cathedral holds the Merseburg Incantations, two pre-Christian Germanic spells from the ninth or tenth century that surfaced in the chapter library in 1841 and remain the only surviving texts of their kind. Its double-storey cloister, built around 1240, ranks among the oldest in Germany, while the 1855 Ladegast organ is one of the largest Romantic instruments in central Germany. Bishop Thietmar's eleventh-century chronicle, written here, still anchors the study of east-central European medieval history. Few towns of this size have shaped so much of the German written record.