2 Best Sights in Weimar, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia

Although the current name, Bauhaus University, only dates from 1996, Walter Gropius renamed the former Great Ducal Saxon Art School as the Bauhaus in 1919. His goal was to challenge the status quo and create a more humanized modernity that fused art and design into architecture and city planning. Henry van de Velde, who suggested Gropius for his position in Weimar, completed what is now the main administrative building of the university in 1911. Although it was conceived as an Art Nouveau structure, Van de Velde’s studio is one of the best-preserved Bauhaus buildings in Germany—be sure to look for the free-standing staircase in the foyer of the building. Van de Velde also designed the horseshoe-shape gable of the Art Faculty in 1906.

This modest, cubical structure designed by Georg Muche for the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition is the first structure constructed using the Bauhaus’s new philosophy of functional modernity. The house is a small cubist structure comprised of concrete and stone walls with a flat roof and is a model for the Meisterhäuser in Dessau. All of the furniture was created specifically for the house by students of the Bauhaus design school.