Altenburg

About

Located 56 miles west of Dresden and 25 miles south of Leipzig, this historic city provides the perfect combination of pre and post-cold war history and architecture. Overlooked by the castle complex, this former royal settlement is now a modern day market town famous throughout the region where visitors flock to its iconic markets. The markets are held in the curiously named “New Market”, which actually dates back to 1192! See how the historic and the modern combine to create a harmonious whole, as the Late Gothic and Baroque buildings of the Old Town merge seamlessly with the twenty-first century. Altenburg’s nickname is ‘playing card town’, a reference to the fact that playing cards have been produced in the city since 1509 and where ‘Skat’, the most popular card game in Germany, was invented. Non-card and card players alike can take pleasure in visiting a city that provides a vibrant and living testimony to a unique slice of twentieth-century history.