The old ducal town of Celle on the Aller, on the southern fringe of Lüneburg Heath, has preserved its character as a princely capital down to our own day. The rectangular layout of the picturesque half-timbered streets of the old town is aligned on the palace.
Kloster Wienhausen, 10km/6mi southeast of Celle, was once a former Cistercian nunnery (13th-14th C.), and is now a Protestant house of retreat for women (nuns' choir; 14th C. wall and ceiling paintings and a Holy Sepulchre of 1445; famous 14th and 15th C. tapestries, shown only once a year at Whitsun).
Celle's old town, with its picturesque half-timbered streets and lanes, lies to the east of the palace. Particularly fine is Kalandgasse, with the old Latin School. At its south end is the Stechbahn, once the scene of knightly tournaments.
In Bergen-Belsen, 7km/4.5mi southwest of Bergen (25km/15mi north of Celle), was the Nazi concentration camp of Belsen, now razed to the ground. Its site is marked by a commemorative obelisk.
An old-time railroad, the Celler Land Express runs north from Celle to Müden and northeast to Hankensbüttel; the journey takes 75 minutes in each direction.
The Celle Schloss, built partly in the Late Gothic period and partly in the Baroque style of the second half of the 17th century, was the residence of the Dukes of Brunswick and Lüneburg from 1292 to 1866. It has fine state apartments and the oldest court theater in Germany (1674); the chapel has a sumptuous Renaissance interior.
Address: Schloss Celle, Schlossführung, D-29221 Celle, Germany
Hours:
11am-3pm; Closed: Mon
Always closed on: Christmas Eve - Christian (December 24), Christmas - Christian (December 25)
Straddling the river Fuhse in Celle is the Provincial Stud Farm, founded in 1735 by the Elector of Hannover, who was also George II of Britain (breeding of stallions; stallion parades in autumn).
The Town Church (14th and 17th C.) in Celle's Markt has epitaphs and grave slabs of the last Dukes of Celle and a princely burial vault (tomb of the Danish Queen Caroline Mathilde, d. 1775).
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