Germany's most famous poet spent fifty years in his house on Frauenplan, now part of the Goethe National Museum. Thanks to Goethe's friendship with Duke Charles Augustus, Weimar became a flourishing centre of the arts in the 18th century. The Duchess Anna Amalia Library also bears witness to that. Goethe himself supervised the collection. The Park on the Ilm provided him with visual inspiration, as his garden house overlooked it.

Among the artists who left their mark on Weimar were Friedrich Schiller, like Goethe a representative of Weimar Classicism, and the composer Franz Liszt. Walter Gropius gave impetus to the modern movement in 1919 when he founded the Bauhaus school of art, architecture and design. Weimar's Bauhaus University carries on that tradition.