Photos

View over the old city of Erfurt from the castle.
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I took this shot when I worked in Germany for half a year and went to visit my relative in Jena, making also a day trip to nearby Erfurt. It was a warm summer day and this is a view I experienced from the castle there.
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From Wikipedia:

Erfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and is the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nürnberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, within the wide valley of Gera River, a tributary of the Unstrut. To the south, the city is surrounded by the hilly forest of Steigerwald.

Erfurt was first mentioned in 742 under the name of "Erphesfurt". It was an important trading town during the Middle Ages near a ford across the Gera river. Together with the other five Thuringian woad-towns of Gotha, Tennstedt, Arnstadt and Langensalza it was the centre of the German woad trade.

In 1349, during the wave of pogroms which followed the Black Death across Europe, the Jews of Erfurt were rounded up, with more than 100 killed and the rest driven from the city. Recently, the medieval synagogue has been discovered beneath newer buildings, and is being restored (completion expected 2009). In 1392, the University of Erfurt, where Martin Luther was matriculated, was founded. One of the leading German universities for many centuries, it fell upon hard times in the early 19th Century, and was forced to close in 1816. It was refounded in 1994 by the Thuringian state parliament and has regained its status as a leading German academic and research institution.

Erfurt became part of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1802, part of the First French Empire in 1806 as Principality of Erfurt, and was returned to Prussia in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars. Although enclosed by Thuringian territory in the west, south and east, the city remained part of the Prussian Province of Saxony until 1944. The city was the site of the failed Erfurt Union of German states in 1850.

Bombed as a target of the Oil Campaign of World War II, Erfurt suffered only limited damage and was captured on April 12, 1945, by units of Patton's Third United States Army. On July 3, American troops left the city and the city became part of the Soviet Zone of Occupation and East Germany. After German reunification, Erfurt became the capital of the re-established state of Thuringia.