Weimar, Germany

Weimar sits on the Ilm River in Thuringia with roughly 65,000 residents and serves as the home of Weimar Classicism, recognized by UNESCO in 1998. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lived here from 1775 to 1832 in a 1709 Baroque house that now operates as a museum, while Friedrich Schiller resided in the city from 1799 to 1805 and Lucas Cranach the Elder worked here as well. The 1919 Weimar Constitution established the Weimar Republic, and that same year Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus movement at what is now the 1919 Bauhaus University. The 1560 Duchess Anna Amalia Library, a UNESCO component holding one million books including a 1534 Luther Bible, anchors the town alongside the 1846 Liszt School of Music, one of Germany's oldest conservatories. What unfolded in this small city would soon reshape how Europe wrote, designed, and governed.