The city of the Bauhaus in the middle of the Garden Realm Dessau-Woerlitz.The Bauhaus Building together with the Masters' Houses and the Garden Realm Dessau-Woerlitz are adopted to the UNESCO list of World Cultural Heritage.
View and book hotels in Dessau. Click here.
When you visit
Dessau, the former seat of the
Princes of Anhalt, you come across the trail of such distinguished personalities as
Moses Mendelssohn,
Wilhelm Mueller and
Kurt Weill. Prince Leopold I of Anhalt Dessau, known as the "Old Dessauer", is also still remembered far and wide as the inventor of the iron ramrod and marching in step. His grandson, Prince Leopold III Friedrich Franz, who had assimilated the ideas of the German Enlightenment, created the
Dessau-Woerlitz Garden Realm which has survived to this day. Villages, palaces, gardens and park buildings in their natural surroundings complement each other and form an integrated whole with the meadows and forests along the
Elbe and
Mulde.
Each park, each palace, has its own particular appeal. The
Mosigkau Palace is one of the last maintained Rococo collections in Middle Germany. The
Georgium Palace houses the significant
Anhalt Art Gallery and on the way to
Woerlitz Park you can also visit the
Luisium or the baroque town, palace and park of Oranienbaum. The whole area is under
UNESCO protection by the
Middle Elbe Biosphere Reserve.
From the middle of the 19th century
Dessau took on a further role as it developed into an economic centre. Oechelhaeuser built the first gas engines here and Junkers the first all-metal aeroplane.
With the establishment of the
Bauhaus in 1925 the town took on world wide importance.
The Bauhaus Dessau is one of the most important and interesting architectural memorials of the 20th century. It was constructed in accordance with the plans of
Walter Gropius and in 1926 opened as the High School for Design. The Bauhaus building and the Master Houses are listed as
UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Further Bauhaus buildings are found all over the city.
