Sangerhausen, the eastern gateway to the Goldene Aue and an important road junction, lies in the southern Harz foreland. It was formerly a copper-mining town, but the last pits closed down in 1990. Visitors can tour the 800-year-old copper mine.
Sangerhausen has numerous hiking opportunities and is well-known as the Rose City. The Rosarium houses the biggest Rose collection in the world with more than 8,300 rose varieties and species.
On the south side of the Markt in Sangerhausen stands the Neues Schloss (New Castle; older part 1568), an imposing three-story Late Renaissance building with the arms of the Elector of Saxony over the entrance and oriels in the courtyard and at the east corner. It is now occupied by the District Court.
In the southeast of Sangerhausen can be seen the Altes Schloss (Old Castle; not open to the public), built about the mid 13th C along with the rest of the town's fortifications; it is now occupied by a music school. In the time of the Margraves of Meissen of the Wettin dynasty this was a frontier fortress on the border with Thuringia.
A major attraction of Sangerhausen is the Rosarium, one of the largest rose gardens in the world, with some 6,500 different roses (altogether 55,000 plants), both cultivated and wild, in an area of some 13 hectares/32 acres.
At Strasse der Opfer des Faschismus 33, the Spengler Museum contains much material on the history of Sangerhausen and on copper mining, also a collection of prehistoric animal remains, including the almost completely preserved skeleton of a steppe elephant or mammoth, found in a gravel quarry at Edersleben in 1930 and recovered by an amateur geologist named G. A. Spengler.
Dominating the Markt of Sangerhausen is the parish church of St James (14th-15th C.; altered 1711-17; restored 1974-75), a Gothic hall-church with a fine interior.
In the center of Sangerhausen is St Ulrich's Church (11th-12th C.), a Romanesque basilica with a vaulted roof which in the 13th C belonged to a Cistercian monastery.
In the Marktplatz of Sangerhausen are a number of patrician houses of the 16th-18th centuries. The Town Hall was originally Late Gothic (1431-37) but was altered in the 16th C. It has an asymmetrical west gable; on the north front is a stone head.
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