I stopped in Halle, on the way from Weimar to Köthen, to visit the Händel-Haus, birthplace in 1685 of Georg Friederich Händel, who went on to become that most English of composers. So I was more than upset to find the house closed for some serious rebuilding and renovation, in preparation for the 250th anniversary of his death in 1759. In my planning I seem to have missed any announcement (if there was one) of the closure on the Handel-Haus website. But considerable compensation was provided by the superb Marktkirche Unser Lieben Frauen, in the city centre... / more |
Marktkirche Unser Lieben Frauen
Originally the two pairs of towers of this interesting church belonged to two different Romanesque churches. But in 1529, in a move by Cardinal Albrecht to spearhead a Catholic counter-attack on Luther‘s Wittenberg-led Reformation, the churches were demolished and the towers joined by a single new Gothic church. A few years later Halle adopted the Reformation anyway, and the church converted to Protestant use...
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Händel-Haus
Georg Friedrich Händel was born in Halle in 1685, in what is now the Händel-Haus. Forty years earlier Handel's father had been appointed as the town surgeon of Giebichenstein, a suburb of Halle, and in 1660 was ordered to serve Duke August as 'surgeon-in-ordinary'. He therefore purchased a house near the Duke's residence. When I arrived at the Händel-Haus, not far from the Marktkirche, I found it closed and covered in scaffolding...
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My IC (InterCity) train from Weimar arrived in Halle on time at 09:58. I left my suitcase at the left luggage and set off to walk to the city centre, surprised to find that Leipziger Strasse, the main road into the centre, is now pedestrianised, when I was expecting from the map to be walking down a road busy with traffic. After a promising start the weather had turned grey; very grey.
After visiting the Marktkirche, and my abortive visit to the Händel-Haus, I thought I might just be able to catch the 12:08 ICE to Köthen, 2 hours earlier than intended. I did my best (my camera case seems to be getting heavier!) but the train was in the platform over the station entrance as I arrived, and pulled out dead on 12:08. It gave me time to collect my case from left luggage, buy a healthy-looking cheese roll and one of the multi-vitamin, multi-fruit drinks that seem popular now in Germany, and sit on the platform eating it while waiting for the 12:43 RB. |
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