Weimar

Weimar takes 1 day to see: Goethe's House, where the writer lived and worked for nearly 50 years, in a morning walk, and the square where the constitution that gave the Weimar Republic its name was signed in 1919, in the afternoon. April-October is best. It's mid-priced by German standards. It was for decades Germany's cultural center thanks to Goethe and Schiller, and in 1919 it was also here that Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus, the design school that would redefine modern architecture worldwide.