Wittenberg
Posted by Martin Orr on Friday, 21 July 2006 at 19:21
Wittenberg is a small, quiet town whose claim to fame is as the centre of the Reformation in the 15th century. A few streets of the old town have been preserved as a cobbled pedestrian zone, although there seemed to be a lot of resurfacing going on.
Near one end is the house where Luther lived, now a museum. From starting as a monk, he seems to have become comfortably well-off and certainly well-known and influential. Appearing before the Holy Roman Emperor in his twenties and refusing to recant his beliefs must have been a pretty daunting experience.
At the other end of the street is the Schlosskirche, to whose door Luther pinned his 95 Theses in 1517. The door itself was destroyed in the Seven Years War and has been replaced by a pair of bronze doors with the Latin text of the theses engraved on them. The church was attached to the Saxon Elector's palace, little of which has survived. Its building does however contain the youth hostel, at the top of a dramatic spiral staircase.
Now in: Leipzig
-- Martin