Gotha

Gotha is a city of 45,000 people (2019) in Thuringia. The main sights of Gotha are the early-modern Friedenstein Castle, one of the largest Renaissance Baroque castles in Germany, the medieval city centre and the Gründerzeit buildings of 19th-century commercial boom.

Understand
During the late Middle Ages, Gotha was an important market town, located on the Via Regia international trade route. From 1640, Gotha was the capital of an independent petty Duchy. Due to complicated succession laws of the Ernestine line of the House of Wettin, Thuringia was separated into more and more states that got smaller and smaller, consisting of many dismembered territories. In 1826, Saxe-Gotha was merged with the neighbouring Saxe-Coburg.

While their home territories were pretty insignificant, the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha were immensely successful in European marriage politics, and at the end of 19th century several European countries were ruled by this dynasty: the United Kingdom (Queen Victoria was married to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha; the House of Windsor is just another name of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, chosen during the anti-German sentiments of the First World War), Belgium (Leopold I was chosen as King of the Belgians in 1831), Bulgaria and Portugal (the latter two are now republics).

There was a rivalry between the two main duchies and residences of Thuringia: Gotha and Weimar. While Weimar stood out for its cultural impact, with Goethe, Schiller, Wieland and Herder all present at Duchess Anna Amalia's "Court of the Muses", Gotha became an early centre of natural sciences. The Dukes of Gotha began to collect naturalia in the 17th century and the town's museum of natural history was one of the first of its kind. The Gotha astronomical observatory was established in 1786 and had a Europe-wide leading position at that epoch. Moreover, Gotha was a stronghold of the German publishing sector, with Perthes being Germany's prime publisher of maps and atlases.

The Gothaer Versicherung was Germany's first mutual insurance company, based on English models. In 1875 the Socialist Workers' Party was founded in Gotha, predecessor of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Get in
Gotha is a station on the high-speed rail link between Frankfurt and Leipzig. ICEs call every two hours, taking one hour from Leipzig, two hours from Frankfurt and 2 hr 15 min from Dresden. Additionally, there are a few intercity trains from Cologne and the Ruhr district per day.

Regional trains from Erfurt call twice an hour, taking about 20 minutes. Moreover, there are regional trains from Weimar (hourly; 30–40 minutes), Jena (every two hours, taking one hour), Göttingen (1 hr 15 min) and Gera (1 hr 35 min).

Get around
The TWSB operates a tramway network with four urban lines plus the Thüringerwaldbahn, an intraurban tramway that links Gotha with the Boxberg hill, the nearby towns Waltershausen, Friedrichroda and Tabarz, and the Marienglashöhle show cave on the northern slope of the Thuringian Forest mountain range (21.7 km in total).

Do

 * Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha, symphony orchestra, gives concerts several times per month, usually at Kulturhaus Gotha or Stadthalle Gotha
 * Kinderchor Gotha children's choir
 * Gothardus festival, first weekend in May, celebrated since the Middle Ages, with markets, concerts, pageant, fireworks
 * Ekhof festival, June to August, concerts and theatrical performance in the historical Ekhof theatre
 * Baroque festival, last weekend in August, cizizens wear Baroque costumes, play scenes set on the court of Duke Frederick III

Go next

 * Erfurt
 * Eisenach
 * Mühlhausen
 * Suhl