Wolfenbuettel

Wolfenbüttel is a small town 12 km from Braunschweig and 60 km from Hannover. The town is well-known in German history, as it has been the residence of the Dukes.

The best time to explore German cities and towns is on holiday mornings. On October 3 at 10 am the streets of Wolfenbüttel were so empty that we could easily take pictures in the downtown without a single person in the picture.

The main attraction of the town is a well-preserved castle palace of the Dukes of Braunschweig and Lüneburg. There's a museum in the palace.

Map of Wolfenbüttel that we used.

Next to the palace there's a library of Duke August. The Duke was an avid bibliophile and collected books since childhood. Books and manuscripts were brought to him from all over Europe. He placed them in former horse stables, specially adapted for this purpose. During his life he collected a number of books that became known as the "eighth wonder of the world." After the death of the Duke there were 134,000 books, manuscripts, maps, globes etc in the library. Since 1666 the library became a public institution. Currently, the library has about a million titles.

Between the library and the palace there's a small house of Gotthold Lessing, founder of German classical literature. Also Gottfried Leibniz used to live in the town and work in the Duke's library.

There's a great old town with lots of half-timbered buildings that will please the fans of beautiful streets. By the way, design of the houses is different from those in other towns and cities. A network of canals, which is now called "Little Venice", was preserved in the town.

The most famous product of Wolfenbüttel is the Jägermeister liqueur, produced since 1935. The recipe was originally developed as a medicine to improve digestion. It has become popular because of the marketing campaign with bands such as Metallica, Slayer, Nightwish, HIM. Now Jägermeister is sponsoring concert tours of alternative metal bands. There is a store of brand merchandise in the downtown.

I saw an interesting truck near the train station. The wooden shoes are very nice =)

Getting there: By regional train from Hannover to Braunschweig (45 minutes), then by regional train to Wolfenbüttel (8 minutes).