Thanks to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's friendship with Grand Duke Charles Augustus, Weimar blossomed into a center of the arts and literature. The city's Duchess Anna Amalia Library bears witness to that. Goethe himself was a patron and director of the library.

Friedrich Schiller was also passionate about scholarship and education, liberty and equality. In such plays as William Tell, he declared war on tyranny. Yet, 140 years later, Weimar was drawn into the savagery of the Nazi era. Buchenwald, one of the largest concentration camps on German soil, now serves as a memorial to those who were killed there during the Holocaust.

The spirit of the Bauhaus architecture and design movement has been revived in a new city district located where the Haus am Horn, an experimental residential house, was built as part of the first Bauhaus exhibition in 1923.

Join pianist Cora Irsen on a tour of Weimar. She says the city is particularly worth visiting in 2011, when it's celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of composer Franz Liszt, who spent time in Weimar. Click on the video below to find out Cora Irsen's recommendations.

Text: DW-TV

Editor: Kate Bowen