Great Train Journey - Leipzig: Part 2 (10 pictures)

The old town area of Leipzig is not as preserved, or as old, as the other cities I visited.  Nonetheless, there are a lot of interesting places to visit.  One of those places is the Church below.  This is the Thomaskirch (St. Thomas' Church).  Founded in 1212, it was rebuilt several times, with the current church mostly being built around 1537, and then reconstructed in 1702.  It has been the home of a famous choir (the Thomerchor) since it's founding in 1212 and is famous as once having Johann Sebastian Bach as its cantor.  Bach's remains are actually currently buried at the church.

Unfortunately, none of my pictures of the inside of the church turned out very well.  But there are a few more shots of the outside, and some more of old Leipzig in the rest of this post.

 
 The picture above is some of the decorations around one of the side entrances to the church.

 
On the opposite side of the church is this statue to J.S. Bach.

 

 Directly to the side of the Thomaskirche, across a small street, is this old building with a Commerzbank branch in it.  I don't know if it's always been a bank building, but the definitely has definitely been a place of affluence I would guess from the decorations.  Although I suspect all of this was torn down during communist times.

 Here is a closer picture of one of the decorations to the left of the door.  I think they are pretty cool.

 Also around the old town you come across some of these old trade houses (at least I think that's what this one was).  Either way, it was pretty cool to look at.

This is the Neues Rathaus (the New Town Hall), which has been the administrative center of the city since 1905.

This is a picture of the back-right of the building (from the view above).  I tried to avoid the construction area on the left (and a different one right behind me, and yet another one further off to my right) where refurbishing work was being done, or new construction taking place.  A lot of the construction work around the old town was being done to shore up foundations and build access points to a new subway line that was being built that would run directly under the old town and through it's center.

 This church was several blocks north of the old city, and a couple of blocks north of my hotel.  It was extra interesting in that there is nearly an exact duplicate church right on the edge of the old town (1 block south from my hotel towards the old town).  I couldn't take any decent pictures of that one because it is right on the main road and (again) because of the construction around it.  This picture doesn't really do it justice, but the different shades of tan and brown in the stonework is really striking. 

Another of the really interesting things I found in Leipzig are these covered passages that run through buildings or that cover private areas between some buildings.  I've seen a few elsewhere in Europe, but none quite this ornate.  This is the Mädlerpassage, which is the most upscale in Leipzig.  My little camera couldn't handle the lighting very well, but it's very interesting inside.

That is the last image of the day.  I have two more posts of pictures from Leipzig after this.  And then I'll move on to Dresden.  Enjoy!  And don't forget that you can click on any image to see a larger version of it.