Behind the scenes: Indoor tours in Leipzig

Leipzig’s Gewandhäuser have been a source of inspiration for music and art lovers for almost 250 years. The city’s musical history comes alive on a guided tour of the third and only surviving Gewandhaus building in Leipzig, which was built in 1981.

The famous composer and pianist Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy once conducted in the first of the three Gewandhaus concert halls, which was originally the guildhall of the city’s cloth merchants – hence its name, which roughly translates as “cloth hall” – while Arthur Nikisch and Wilhelm Furtwängler performed in the second.
The initiative for the construction of the third and current Gewandhaus came from the Gewandhaus music director, Kurt Masur. With its impressive Great Hall, which seats 1,900 people, it was the only new concert hall to be built in the GDR.

A tour of this architectural gem will give you a fascinating insight into the world of the Gewandhaus Orchestra. Meet great names in music history, admire the majestic Schuke organ and learn about the outstanding acoustics.
In the foyers you can marvel not only at Europe’s largest contemporary ceiling fresco, but also numerous paintings and sculptures.

Our tip: The Gewandhaus is also ideal for a unique evening event to round off your conference or congress in Leipzig.

Today’s Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig has a chequered history and impressive neoclassical architecture.
The then Imperial Court of Justice – the Reichsgericht – was inaugurated in 1879. It was used by the National Socialists as a courthouse from 1933 to 1945: judges critical of the regime were dismissed and the remaining legal practitioners were brought into line.

During the GDR era, the neoclassical building served a number of purposes, including as a museum. After reunification, it was first used as the Federal Administrative Court of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1992.
The building opened in its current form in 2002 after four years of renovation and modernisation. Since then, as the Federal Administrative Court, it has been the highest administrative court in the Federal Republic of Germany.

But what lies behind the façade of justice? What stories does the former Imperial Court of Justice have to tell about its time as the Dimitroff Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, or indeed as a dubbing studio?

A guided tour of the Federal Administrative Court provides answers to these questions, as well as a glimpse of the closed courtrooms and the former private rooms of the last president of the Reichsgericht, Erwin Bumke.