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We've compiled the best of the best in Leipzig - browse our top choices for the top things to see or do during your stay.
Historical musical instruments, mostly from the Renaissance, include the world's oldest clavichord, constructed in 1543 in Italy. There are also spinets, flutes, and lutes. Recordings of the instruments can be heard at the exhibits.
This building once served as the headquarters of the city's detachment of the Communist secret police, the dreaded Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. The exhibition Stasi—Macht und Banalität (Stasi—Power and Banality) presents not only the Stasi's offices and surveillance work, but also hundreds of documents revealing the magnitude of its interests in citizens' private lives. Although the material is in German, the items and atmosphere convey an impression of what life under the regime might have been like. The exhibit about the death penalty in the GDR is particularly chilling. For a detailed tour of the Revolutions of 1989, be sure to download the museum's app.
Saxons drink coffee like it is a religion, and this museum and café-restaurant tells the fascinating history of coffee culture in Saxony and Europe. It is one of the oldest on the continent, and once proudly served coffee to such luminaries as Gotthold Lessing, Schumann, Goethe, and Liszt. Even Johann Sebastian Bach was guest at the famous coffee house. The museum features many paintings, Arabian coffee vessels, and coffeehouse games. It also explains the basic principles of roasting coffee. The café is divided into traditional Viennese, French, and Arabian coffeehouses, but no coffee is served in the Arabian section, which is only a display. The cake is better and the seating more comfortable in the Viennese part. There is an ongoing discussion in Leipzig that this building, with its Turkish imagery, needs to be put into its post-colonial context.
Inside the Altes Rathaus, this museum documents Leipzig's past. The entrance is behind the Rathaus. The museum's extended collection continues behind the Museum for Applied Arts.
This excellent history museum focuses on issues surrounding the division and unification of Germany after World War II.
