Germany Guide
Saxony-Anhalt and the Harz
Franckesche Stiftung
Address: Franckeplatz 1
Opening time: Tues– Sun 10am–5pm
Price: €3
Telephone: 0345/212 74 00
Website: www.francke-halle.de
Just south of the Altstadt, and the roaring through-traffic along the Mortizzwinger, lies the Franckesche Stiftung, an early eighteenth-century complex that was almost a town in itself, with its own school, orphanage, workshops, impressive public library, and three-thousand-strong population. Set up by theologian and scholar August Hermann Francke as an educational institution, it then developed under its own steam. The life of Francke and the complex's history are explored in the museum at its hub, the Historisches Waisenhaus (Historic Orphanage). More entertaining is the Kunst- und Naturalienkammer (Art and Natural History chamber), a treasure-trove of all things that occupied the eighteenth-century scholastic mind, with a mock-up of the cosmic system and a pharmacists' workshop among a miscellany of curios from every corner of the globe.