St George's Church
St George's Church is Eisenach's main town church, standing on the southern side of the market square. What you see today is a Gothic hall church that grew out of an older building from 1515 onwards, then was reshaped again at the end of the 16th century and in the 17th and 18th. The result is a mix of eras rather than one clean style, and that is part of its charm. Look up at the tower: it only arrived between 1899 and 1902, when the church, until then without a tower, got its neo-Baroque tower and portal. The architect Otto Marsch took the cathedral tower in Monza as his model.
Two names make this church famous. Martin Luther preached here during the Reformation, which makes it one of the oldest Protestant churches anywhere. And Johann Sebastian Bach was baptised here in March 1685, two days after his birth. Two decades before that, his relative Johann Christoph Bach had already been the church organist. For a time it also served as the court church and, until 2009, as the bishop's church of the Lutheran Church in Thuringia.
There is an older legend too. According to the historian Adam Ursinus, the banner of St George, under which Landgrave Ludwig III fought and died on the Third Crusade, flew out of a castle window during a fire in 1190 and vanished; the church was supposedly built in its memory. Its first written mention dates from 1196.
Go inside: admission is free. Look for the richly carved pulpit from 1676 and the Baroque organ case from 1719. After heavy damage in the air raids of 1945 and long restoration work, the interior has shown its old range of colours again since 1978 and was renovated once more between 2011 and 2014. The tower crypt costs extra. From the church it is only 160 metres, about 2 minutes, to the Thuringian Museum.
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