Leipzig

Leipzig is the largest city in Saxony, sitting about 190 kilometres southwest of Berlin and 110 kilometres northwest of Dresden. The historic centre is compact, anchored by the Markt at one end and the Hauptbahnhof at the other, with Augustusplatz, the Thomaskirche, and the Nikolaikirche all inside a 15 minute walk of each other. The city’s identity is shaped by a long trade fair tradition, by Bach’s tenure at the Thomaskirche from 1723 to 1750, and by the 1989 Monday Demonstrations that began at the Nikolaikirche and helped end the East German regime.

New City Hall of Leipzig (Neues Rathaus)

The New City Hall, locally known as Neues Rathaus, is one of those buildings that looks heavier than it should until the light hits it. I scouted it the previous evening, walking streets full of locals and tourists, looking for a frame I could come back to. Then I woke up about 90 minutes before sunrise and walked back into a city that had gone quiet.

As dawn broke, the building started to glow under the first sun, and the cityscape moved through every minute of that transition from darkness to light. The same square that had been busy the night before was mine for an hour. Its tower, at 114.8 metres, is the tallest city hall tower in Germany; it opened in 1905 and offered the best view in town from the start.

The next morning I shot the tower again from the hotel room, this time with a teleconverter on the 70 to 200, turning the lens into a 140 to 400. Compressed through that focal length, the tower feels like a separate object, hovering over the rooftops rather than rising from them.

Markt and Leipzig’s Old City Hall

The Old City Hall sits on the Markt and was built in 1556. Its 53 metre ballroom has hosted patrician weddings, student balls, and court hearings, and these days it leans toward concerts and cultural events. I went there on the 29th of December. The Christmas market had just closed, and trucks were dismantling booths all around me.

I had one morning. I circled the building twice looking for compositions clean enough to work around the trucks. In front of the metro station “Markt”, I set the camera low, waited for vehicles and pedestrians to pass, and tried again until a frame held.

A second frame, looking through the arches without people in it, was the one I kept coming back to. The Roman numeral MCMVII on the arcade reads 1907, tied to the renovation that added the porphyry arcade facing the marketplace. The metro entrance directly beside the building still carries the inscription “Untergrundmesshalle”, a reminder that this site once held the world’s first underground trade fair.

Mädlerpassage and Auerbachs Keller

Mädlerpassage is the most ornate of Leipzig’s covered shopping arcades, and it hides the city’s most famous restaurant in its basement. We arrived hungry, Daria pulled up Tripadvisor, and we walked down two flights of stairs flanked by life-sized statues into Auerbachs Keller. The restaurant has been on this site since 1525.

As a student in the 1760s, Goethe drank here and noticed paintings of Doctor Faustus on the walls. In his Faust, Auerbachs Keller becomes the only real-world location referenced in the play, the cellar where Mephistopheles drills wine straight from the wood of a table.

I came back early the next morning, settling on a composition where the arches of the Old City Hall frame the entrance to Mädlerpassage. To capture the golden glow of the arcade against the cooler light outside, I combined multiple exposures into an HDR, something I rarely do nowadays.

St. Thomas Church (Thomaskirche)

The Thomaskirche is where Johann Sebastian Bach worked as Thomaskantor from 1723 until his death in 1750, leading the boys’ choir and composing most of his church music for this building. Bach is buried inside, in front of the altar, and the Thomanerchor still sings here regularly.

The church itself is older than its most famous resident: a Romanesque foundation from the 12th century, rebuilt in late Gothic style around 1496. The square in front, the Thomaskirchhof, holds a bronze statue of Bach by Carl Seffner from 1908, and the Bach-Archiv sits across the square in the Bosehaus. For a photographer, the cleanest frames are usually from the western side at first light, with the side aisle and the steep roof line stacked into a single shape.

City-Hochhaus

The City-Hochhaus is the tallest occupied building in Leipzig, completed in 1972 as the central tower of the university and converted into a mixed-use office block after reunification. It’s the silhouette in the centre of every Leipzig skyline shot, distinguishable by its slightly curved profile, sometimes read as an open book. A viewing platform on the 31st floor, roughly 120 metres above ground, looks down on the New City Hall, the Markt, and the green ring around the historic centre.

For my own night skyline I used the same approach I rely on in any city with a good vantage: find a hotel room with the right view. In Leipzig, that was the Westin, on the 28th of December. I set up the camera and waited for sunset, sitting on the bed. Then I noticed they were not turning on the floodlights on some of the famous buildings. Daria called it: energy saving, winter 2022, the German energy crisis. So I shifted toward the streets instead, with exposures that caught the cars threading through the centre. The result reads like gold flowing through Leipzig.

Leipzig Central Station

Leipzig Hauptbahnhof is one of the largest railway terminals in Europe by floor area, with a long classical facade and a shopping concourse on two levels underneath the platforms. At Christmas it gets dressed up, and just after 7am the city was still quiet enough to work.

I went low because I have always liked cobblestones, and I wanted the road to lead the eye toward the station. Closer to the ground, the scene felt more immersive, almost as if the viewer were walking into the frame. The cold air, the Christmas ornaments, and the warm light from the street lamps came together without much effort. The station has been on this site since 1915, and the scale of the facade still does most of the compositional work for you.

Karl-Heine-Kanal and Plagwitz

West of the centre, the Karl-Heine-Kanal cuts through Plagwitz, the former industrial district that has become Leipzig’s quieter creative quarter. The canal was named after Karl Heine, the 19th-century industrialist and lawyer who bought up swampy land west of the city and converted it into an industrial belt, digging the canal between 1856 and 1898 to connect Plagwitz with the Saale river.

The Spinnerei, an old cotton mill turned gallery complex, sits a short walk from the canal and gives the district its current reputation. For photography, the canal walks are best at dusk in summer, when the bridges and converted warehouses reflect cleanly in the still water and the bike traffic dies down.

When to Visit Leipzig

Late December has worked well for me. Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve the city empties out, hotels are easy to book on short notice, and the cold keeps the streets quiet enough for dawn shoots. The trade-off is the Christmas market, which fills the Markt until it closes on the 23rd of December and blocks most of the obvious compositions.

Spring, from late April through June, and early autumn, in September and October, are gentler if you want long days, full access to the squares, and dependable evening light. July and August are warm but quiet, with many residents heading to the surrounding lakes. Two days cover the historic centre at a relaxed pace; a third adds Plagwitz and the canal walks.

Food and Drink in Leipzig

Saxon cooking is meat and potatoes by default, with a few local specialities worth seeking out. Leipziger Allerlei is the dish most associated with the city, a vegetable stew built around peas, carrots, asparagus, kohlrabi, and morels, sometimes finished with crayfish tails. Auerbachs Keller still serves a classical version, alongside heavier mains like Sauerbraten and roasted pork knuckle.

For coffee and cake, Café Kandler near the Thomaskirche is the long-standing tourist standard, known for its Leipziger Lerche (a shortcrust pastry filled with marzipan and jam, originally a substitute for an actual lark pie banned in the 19th century). Outside the centre, Plagwitz and the streets around the Karl-Heine-Kanal hold most of the newer cafes and craft beer bars, with a slower pace than the Markt.

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