Germany Guide
Saxony
Görlitz
"For many simply the most beautiful city in Germany" proclaims the marketing board, thanks to an accolade bestowed by the chairman of the German Foundation for the Protection of Historic Monuments. It's only just in Germany, though. The postwar redraw of the map shifted the German–Polish border onto the Neisse River, thereby cleaving GÖRLITZ in two. Perhaps that's apt for an Altstadt that is pure central Europe – it flourished on the east–west Via Regia route that linked Kiev to Santiago de Compostela, and in 1815 was amalgamated into Silesia, a definitively Central European province along the Oder River that took in slices of modern Poland and the Czech Republic. The GDR regime surveyed the town and slapped a preservation order on the entire Altstadt, though they seemed less fussed that the four thousand listed buildings were allowed to moulder. Post-reunification investment has re-energized the Altstadt, and Untermarkt is arguably the finest town square in east Germany: less a collection of buildings than a living Old Master, gorgeous at dusk. "At nightfall I long to be in Görlitz," Goethe once sighed. Now film directors have taken notice: Görlitz was Paris in Jackie Chan's Eighty Days Around the World (2004) and its historic streets featured in Kate Winslet flick The Reader (2009).