Germany Guide
Thuringia
The Augustinerkloster
Address: Augustinerstrasse
Opening time: tours Mon– Sat hourly 10am– noon & 2–4/5pm, Sun 11am, 2pm & 3pm
Price: €5
Fourteenth-century Augustinerkloster is where Luther was a monk from 1505 to 1511. The story goes he signed up in gratitude for the monastery's hospitality when he was caught out by a storm. "One difficult sentence was sufficient to occupy my thoughts for the whole day," he wrote of his time here. Battered by the war, the Augustinian monastery has re-created a half-timbered nook similar to that in which the father of the Reformation studied as a novice – monastic rules of poverty forbid monks from owning their own cell – and there is a small ecclesiastical museum, not to mention charming cloisters. Having adopted his doctrines in 1525, Luther's church is suitably spartan in response to his condemnation of visual distractions, pepped up only with medieval stained glass in the choir.