We visited Lutherstadt Wittenberg for a particularly cold November afternoon. The town itself was quite pretty but not at its best on an icy autumn day, I would guess it is a lovely place to wander around on warmer days but probably filled with tour busses.

There are three places specifically associated with Luther; the Stadtkirche, Schlosskirke and Lutherhaus, also included is the house of Luther's friend and contemporary Melanchthon.

Unfortunately we were unable to visit the Lutherhaus as a party consisting of 6 coach loads of tourists was decanted into it just as we arrived, I was a little disappointed as the exhibits are supposed to be a good introduction. However thanks to a excellent radio documentary by Melvyn Bragg on BBC Radio4 I had a pretty good grasp of the context. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20061012.shtml]

The Schlosskirche had a surprisingly ornate interior for such a small protestant church, the ambience was slightly spoilt when the tour group entered all with cameras blazing. The door commemorating the nailing of the 95 theses was impressive, but it seems contentious as to whether this famous act ever happened.

I really liked the main square (picture) and spent a fair amount of time in the Stadtkirche, it is a really significant place as this was the platform from which the first protestant lectures were delivered, it also has a fine altarpiece by Lucas Cranarch the elder. It is interesting to see on the outside rear of the church a 'Judensau' statue. It is highly offensive to Jews, and helps to illustrate that Luther preached virulent anti-Semitic beliefs. There is a monument on the ground funded by the people of Wittenberg, which attempts to come to terms with this particularly unpleasant part of their history.

As said elsewhere this is an odd inscription, it is more of interest for what happened here than what still exists. It is not possible to boil the reformation down to one starting point, Jan Hus had been preaching similar things more than a century before in Bohemia, however it was in Wittenberg that the Reformation became one of the most important parts of European and World history, and it is certainly worthy of the time to explore a town that has such an identifiable place in history.