Tourist Attractions in Brandenburg

The former Gymnasium (Grammar School; 1797) in Brandenburg's New Town is a three-story Baroque building with a coat of arms below the mansard roof. There is a reference to a church school on this site as early as 1386.

The village of Ketzür, 10km/6mi northeast of Brandenburg, has an Early Gothic church (14th-18th C.) with fine 17th C. wall paintings and an early 17th C. epitaph.

On the Marienberg (69 m/226ft) in Brandenburg's new town is the Marienberg Park. Here a Germanic tribe, the Semnones, worshipped the goddess Freya, and in the 11th and 12th centuries there was also a Slav sanctuary on the hill. In 1220 a church dedicated to the Virgin, with a wonderworking image, was built here; it was destroyed during the Thirty Years War, and the ruins were finally pulled down in 1772.

The Municipal Museum in Brandenburg is in the Freyhaus, a Baroque building of 1723 with a fine staircase hall, and has much material illustrating the history of the town and an important collection of European graphic art of the 16th-20th centuries, including an almost complete representation of the work of Daniel Chodowiecki.

In Plaue, 10km/6mi west of Brandenburg, is a brick-built Late Romanesque church with Gothic wall paintings (15th C.) and a Renaissance pulpit.

The Baroque palace (1711-16) in Plaue, 10km/6mi northwest of Brandenburg, is now occupied by a school.

Rathenow, 32km/20mi northwest of Brandenburg, has a Romanesque parish church (renovated 1517) with a Late Gothic winged altar and the monument (by J. G. Glume, 1738) of Elector Frederick William, depicted in the garb of a Roman emperor. Nearby is the Heimatmuseum (history of the town's optical industry, etc.).

To the north of the Town Hall in Brandenburg is the parish church of St Gotthardt (12th C.), the oldest building in Brandenburg, with a Late Gothic nave (15th C.) and a Baroque crest to the tower. Notable features in the interior are the bronze font (Romanesque, 13th C.), a Triumphal Cross group (15th C., Late Gothic), a tapestry of around 1463 depicting a unicorn hunt, a Renaissance altar (1559) and 16th and 18th C. epitaphs.

In the south of the old town in Brandenburg can be found the ruined parish church of St John (St. Johannis), an Early Gothic brick church (13th C.; part restored 1951), with a rose window over the north doorway and a slender tower (1500).

The Nikolaikirche (St Nicholas's Church), southwest of Brandenburg's old town, is a brick-built Late Romanesque basilica (1170-1230; damaged 1945).

The Gothic Petrikapelle in Burgweg in Brandenburg has been the parish church of the Cathedral parish since 1320, with cellular vaulting of 1520. A Slav king named Pribislaw-Heinrich is said to have been buried in 1150 in an earlier church on the site.

Parts of the town walls in Brandenburg still survive, with four gate towers - the Rathenower Torturm (Gothic blind arcading), the Plauer Torturm (topped by an openwork crown), the Mühltorturm and the Steintorturm - and the Wasserpromenade and Annenpromenade.