Halle, a city with a history reaching back more than a thousand years, lies on the lower Saale, below its junction with the Weisse Elster, on the western edge of the fertile Leipzig basin (Saxon Lowland) with its rich seams of lignite. The town's early prosperity was based on the salt trade, as its very name indicates (hall = "salt"). An old and famous university town, it was the birthplace of Georg Friedrich Händel, the composer known in English-speaking countries as Handel.
Boat services
The landing-stage used by passenger boats on the Saale is below Burg Giebichstein. Boats ply down the Saale to Trotha, Wettin and Bernburg, upstream to the Rabeninsel (extension to Röpzig planned).
Downstream from the Saaleaue in Halle is Burg Giebichenstein, from 961 a residence of the Archbishops of Magdeburg. Part of the Oberburg (Upper Castle), which was destroyed during the Thirty Years War, survives as a ruin (in which excavations were carried out in 1960-61). It now houses a Museum of Architecture. The Unterburg (Lower Castle) is now occupied by the College of Industrial Design.
Address: Burg Giebichenstein, Neuwerk 7, D-06108 Halle, Germany
On Franckeplatz, southeast of Halle's town center, are the Francke Foundations, built from 1698 onwards on the initiative of the Pietist A. H. Francke as a poorhouse and orphan school. There is a Francke Memorial by C. D. Rauch (1829).
Address: Franckeschen Stiftungen, Franckeplatz 1, Haus 37, D-06110 Halle, Germany
Northwest of the town is Halle's "municipal forest", the Dölauer Heide, an area of 765 ha/1,890 ac (mainly pine forest) designated as a landscape reserve, with two nature reserves. Among features of interest are a number of Neolithic burial mounds and remains of a fortified Stone Age settlement. On the Kolkberg is an outlook tower. The church in Dölau has a Late Gothic winged altar (c. 1500).
Southeast of the Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, in Richard-Wagner-Strasse, can be found the Provincial Museum of Prehistory, housed in an Art Nouveau building (by Wilhelm Kreis, 1913-14).
To the north of Burg Giebichenstein in Halle is the Zoo (entrance in Reilstrasse). From the outlook tower on the Reilsberg there are wide views of Halle and the surrounding area.
On a round-topped porphyry hill 20km/12.5mi northeast of Halle on B 100 is a completely preserved double chapel (c. 1170), all that is left of a castle belonging to the Margraves of Landsberg. The chapel was originally two-storied, and a third story was added in the 15th C to provide living accommodation (restored in 1860-61 and again in 1928-30).
In the village of Petersberg (12km/7.5mi north of Halle), conspicuously situated on the hill of that name (250 m/820ft) which dominates the surrounding plain, stands the church of an Augustinian house (founded 1128) which was closed in 1538. The church itself, an aisled cruciform basilica, was burned down in 1565, rebuilt almost in its original form in 1853 and renovated from 1958 onwards.
On the west side of Halle lies the Kulturpark Saaleaue, a leisure park on the island of Peissnitz, with exhibition halls, an open-air theater, a miniature railroad, a Space Planetarium and various sports facilities, including an ice-rink.
To the west of the Halle Hallmarkt, in Mansfelder Strasse, is the Saltworks Museum, which illustrates the method of extracting salt by boiling and the way of life of the old salt-workers (Halloren). Once a month, on a Sunday, there is a demonstration of salt-boiling.
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Halle - Moritzburg
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Petersberg, Germany
