🇩🇪 Germany · Berlin and the East
Leipzig is one of those German cities that win you over without showing off. For a long time it stood in the shadow of Berlin and Dresden, but today it is one of the most vibrant destinations in the east of the country: a city of music, trade fairs, books and peaceful revolutions, combining a compact, elegant historic centre with one of the most interesting alternative cultural scenes in Germany. They call it 'Hypezig' for a reason.
Johann Sebastian Bach lived and worked here, serving for almost three decades as cantor of St Thomas Church, where his remains rest. Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner (who was born in the city) and Goethe, who set a scene of 'Faust' in the Auerbachs Keller tavern, also passed through these streets. And it was in St Nicholas Church that, in the autumn of 1989, the prayers for peace and the Monday demonstrations lit the spark of the peaceful revolution that ended the GDR.
This guide walks through Leipzig with a practical, warm eye: how to follow in Bach's footsteps, where to feel the pulse of the 1989 revolution, which shopping arcades and historic cafés to visit, how to climb the colossal Monument to the Battle of the Nations and how to make the most of the creative scene in districts like Plagwitz and the old Spinnerei cotton mill. An ideal city for combining history, music and contemporary life in a few days.
Leipzig began as a Slavic Sorbian settlement whose name derives from 'Lipsk', 'the place of the lime trees'. First mentioned around 1015 by the chronicler Thietmar of Merseburg, it received town and market privileges at the start of the twelfth century. Its position at the crossing of two great medieval trade routes — the Via Regia and the Via Imperii — turned it into a fair city of European fame: the Leipziger Messe is one of the oldest trade fairs in the world. To that commercial vocation was soon added that of books and printing: for centuries Leipzig was the German capital of publishing and bookselling. In 1409 its university was founded, one of the oldest in Germany, where figures such as Goethe and Nietzsche studied. In music, the city reached glory with Johann Sebastian Bach, cantor of the Thomaskirche between 1723 and 1750, and with the Gewandhaus orchestra and the conservatory founded by Mendelssohn. In 1813 its surroundings were the setting for the Battle of the Nations, the largest battle of the Napoleonic wars, commemorated with a colossal monument. After the Second World War, Leipzig lay in the GDR. In 1989, the prayers for peace at the Nikolaikirche and the huge Monday demonstrations ('Montagsdemonstrationen') made it the cradle of the peaceful revolution that precipitated the fall of the Wall and German reunification. The full history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Prussian heart of Germany: Berlin, capital of the Reich and of the Republic; Potsdam and the Hohenzollern palaces; Dresden, the Florence on the Elbe flattened in 1945; and Leipzig, birthplace of the peaceful demonstrations that helped bring down the Wall in 1989.
Read the history of Berlin and the East →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Like so many cities in eastern Germany, Leipzig has Slavic roots. The name derives from the Sorbian 'Lipsk' (or 'Lipsko'), related to the Slavic word for the lime tree ('lipa'): Leipzig would thus be 'the place of the lime trees'. The region was settled by the Sorbs, a West Slavic people, before the medieval German expansion east of the Elbe and the Saale.
The first written mention of Leipzig appears around the year 1015 in the chronicle of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg, who cites the 'urbs Libzi'. It was then a small fortified settlement. What would shape its destiny, however, was its privileged geographical position: Leipzig lay at the crossing of two of the great trade routes of medieval Europe, the Via Regia (running west to east, from the Rhineland to Silesia and Poland) and the Via Imperii (running north to south, from the Baltic to Italy).
That crossroads made Leipzig a natural exchange point. At the start of the twelfth century, around 1165, Margrave Otto of Meissen granted it town and market privileges, laying the foundations of its commercial vocation. What had begun as a Slavic settlement beside the lime trees was destined to become one of the great fair cities of Europe.
From the Middle Ages, Leipzig's identity revolved around its trade fairs. Thanks to the royal and imperial privileges it received over the centuries — especially that of the imperial fair, which obliged merchants across a wide radius to offer their goods in Leipzig — the Leipziger Messe became one of the most important fairs in Europe, drawing traders from across the continent. That fair tradition, centuries old, is still alive today in the city's modern exhibition grounds.
To the commercial vocation was added that of books. For centuries Leipzig was the German capital of printing, publishing and the book trade, home to countless publishing houses and to the German Book Exchange. Even today it hosts the Leipzig Book Fair (Leipziger Buchmesse), one of the most important in the country, and the German National Library has one of its sites here.
Culture found another pillar in 1409, when the University of Leipzig was founded, one of the oldest in Germany (only Heidelberg precedes it among those still operating). Figures such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe — who immortalised it in his 'Faust' and who called Leipzig 'a little Paris' — and Friedrich Nietzsche passed through its lecture halls. Trade, books and learning intertwined to give the city an unusually cultured and cosmopolitan profile.
If anything has given Leipzig universal fame, it is music. The city is, first and foremost, Johann Sebastian Bach's city. The great composer settled in Leipzig in 1723 as cantor (Thomaskantor) of St Thomas Church, a post he held until his death in 1750. Over those 27 years he composed much of his sacred work — cantatas, motets and, probably, his great passions — for the services of the city's churches, directing the St Thomas choir. His remains rest today in the Thomaskirche itself, now a place of musical pilgrimage.
The legacy kept growing. In the nineteenth century, Felix Mendelssohn conducted the Gewandhaus Orchestra — one of the oldest civic orchestras in the world, founded in 1743 — and raised it to the first rank in Europe; he also founded Germany's first music conservatory in Leipzig, in 1843. The city was also the setting for the lives of Robert and Clara Schumann, and the birthplace of Richard Wagner, born here in 1813.
That musical density made Leipzig a centre of European culture. The tradition is fully alive: the St Thomas boys' choir (Thomanerchor) has eight centuries of history, the Gewandhausorchester plays regularly in its hall of excellent acoustics, and the city honours Bach with festivals, museums and concerts that draw music lovers from all over the world.
In October 1813, the fields around Leipzig were the setting for one of the most colossal military events of the nineteenth century: the Battle of the Nations (Völkerschlacht bei Leipzig), fought between 16 and 19 October. In it, the allied armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden faced the army of Napoleon Bonaparte and his allies.
It was the largest battle of the Napoleonic wars and, by the number of combatants involved (more than half a million soldiers from many nations, hence the name 'battle of the nations'), one of the largest in European history up to the First World War. Napoleon's defeat at Leipzig was decisive: it forced him to withdraw across the Rhine, marked the beginning of the end of his hold on Europe and paved the way to his first abdication, in 1814.
A century later, in 1913, Leipzig commemorated the battle's centenary by inaugurating the Völkerschlachtdenkmal (Monument to the Battle of the Nations), a colossal mass of concrete and stone about 91 metres high, one of the most imposing commemorative structures in Europe. Its monumental, solemn style makes the visit a striking experience, and from its upper platform you look out over the whole city. The monument recalls not only the victory but the enormous human cost of that battle.
After the Second World War, Leipzig lay within the Soviet occupation zone and, from 1949, formed part of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It remained an important industrial and trade fair city of the socialist state, keeping alive its tradition of international fairs that served as a window onto trade with the West. But, like all of the GDR, it lived under a one-party regime, with secret police surveillance (the Stasi) and restrictions on freedom.
It was precisely in Leipzig that pressure for change found its most decisive channel. From 1982, St Nicholas Church (Nikolaikirche) hosted the 'Friedensgebete' (prayers for peace) every Monday. Through 1989, in a context of growing discontent and an exodus of citizens to the West, those gatherings began to overflow the church and turn into public demonstrations: the 'Montagsdemonstrationen' (Monday demonstrations).
The climax came on 9 October 1989. Despite fears of bloody repression — there was concern that the regime would react as China had at Tiananmen a few months earlier — some 70.000 people marched peacefully around Leipzig's inner ring road chanting 'Wir sind das Volk' ('We are the people'). The security forces did not intervene, and that day is considered a point of no return. The demonstrations grew until they numbered hundreds of thousands, and a month later the Berlin Wall came down. That is why Leipzig is known as 'Heldenstadt', the 'city of heroes' of the peaceful revolution.
With German reunification in 1990, Leipzig went through a difficult but ultimately successful transition. The disappearance of the planned economy caused many factories to close and a sharp population decline through the nineties, with industrial districts left empty and buildings falling apart. Yet that same decline opened unexpected opportunities.
The wide abandoned industrial spaces and cheap rents drew artists, creatives and young people. The old cotton mill (Spinnerei) and other factory complexes were converted into studios, galleries and cultural spaces. The so-called 'New Leipzig School', with painters such as Neo Rauch, put the city on the map of world contemporary art. Districts such as Plagwitz and the Südvorstadt flourished as centres of alternative life. That buzz earned it the nickname 'Hypezig', and made Leipzig one of the fastest growing cities in Germany in the twenty-first century.
Today Leipzig combines several souls: the commercial and trade fair splendour of centuries, the great musical heritage of Bach and Mendelssohn, the memory of the peaceful revolution of 1989 and a young, vibrant cultural scene. It is a city that knew how to reinvent itself, recovering its population and its prestige, and today it ranks among the most interesting and dynamic destinations in eastern Germany.