Bautzen Germany: 10 Best Things To Do & Travel Tips

Bautzen is one of the best hidden gems in Germany.  This Saxon town, in the southern corner of eastern Germany, is one of the most beautiful towns in the country, with a stunning skyline of medieval towers.

In my guide to the best things to do in Bautzen Germany, I show you all the best places to see. I will also explain the town’s history – it’s also the capital of the Sorbian Slavic minority. And I’ll show you how to get to Bautzen, and the best places to stay in the town.

I hope you enjoy my guide and find it helpful.

Bautzen is one of the most beautiful small towns in Germany.

It has a beautifully preserved medieval town centre, surrounded by a series of walls and towers – a little like San Gimignano in Saxony.

Bautzen has superb architecture, from the medieval Gothic of its town towers to its Renaissance Castle. It also has some gorgeous Rococo townhouses near the main square.

Bautzen – also known as Budyšin – is the main city of the Sorbs, a Slavic minority with their own language, culture and cuisine. The excellent Sorbian Museum tells their story.

The first mention of Bautzen – Budyšin in Sorbian – was in documents dated 1002. At the time it was known as Budissin, and was the capital of the Sorbian Milzener tribe.

Until the 15^th century, Sorbian variants of the town name were used.

Bautzen grew as a trade centre, as it was on the Via Regia, a major trading route across Central Europe during the Middle Ages.

It changed hands throughout the Middle Ages  – it was part of the Holy Roman Empire, Bohemia, Hungary, then Bohemia again. The town was eventually captured – and largely burned down – by the Saxons in 1634. Another fire caused huge damage to the city in 1709.

The first Battle of Bautzen was fought in May 1813 between French and Coalition forces. Naploeon Bonaparte won this Battle, but with significant losses.  He would later suffer a heavy defeat at the Battle of the Nations in Leipzig in October of the same year, and be forced to retreat.

The second Battle of Bautzen was fought between German defenders and a combined Soviet-Polish force in April 1945.  German forces inflicted heavy casualties on the Polish army, but this made no difference to the ultimate outcome of the Battle of Berlin to the north. Within weeks Hitler was dead, the Nazis had surrendered and Berlin was occupied by the Red Army.

 Bautzen was notorious under the Soviet-imposed East German Communist regime. Its main prison, the Yellow Misery, was one of the most feared in the country. And Bautzen II – run by the dreaded Stasi secret police – was used to confine political opponents of the GDR government.

I rate Bautzen one of the most beautiful towns in Germany. For a first glimpse, take a short walk across the Friedenbrücke (Freedom Bridge) over the River Spree.

It’s a magnificent view. You see the town skyline, which hasn’t changed in several hundred years. The skyline includes town wall towers, water towers and church towers. The first time I saw a photograph of it, I knew I had to get there and explore.

I was very fortunate to visit on one of those gorgeous winter days with snow on the ground and a wall-to-wall blue sky all day.

Curiously, this part of the church veers off at an angle from the nave of the church. This is very rare, and nobody quite knows why.

Dom St Petri was built between 1213 and 1221, and extended and remodelled in the 15^th century.  A fire caused severe damage in 1634, so the interior was rebuilt in Gothic-Baroque style.

One of my favourite things to do in Bautzen is to wander. The Altstadt (Old Town) is small and compact, and you could easily walk all of its streets in two to three hours.

I visited on a beautiful winter day with snow and ice on the ground, so was forced to take it very slowly. This turned out to be a good thing, as I got to appreciate Bautzen more.

You can climb several of the towers in Bautzen. These include the leaning Reichenturm and the Alte Wasserkunst, the Old Waterworks overlooking the River Spree.

The Wasserkunst is the conical tower in the photographs above. It was built in 1558 to maintain a regular supply of drinking water to the people of Bautzen.  It did so – for an astonishing 407 years, until it was superseded by a modern water works outside the town.

The water works was later restored, so you can now see how it all worked once again. And you can climb the 184 steps to the rooftop for a superb view over the rooftops of Bautzen.

Everywhere you go in Bautzen, you see signs in the Sorbian language. Somewhere between 10-20% of the population of Bautzen speak Sorbian, a western Slavic language that has survived for around 1,300 years. It is believed that there are around 20-30,000 speakers in total, and 60-80,000 people that identify themselves as Sorbs across Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.

The Sorbian Museum, in the Ortenburg castle complex in the old town, is the place to learn more about them. Non-German speakers should request the English audio-guide, which is easy to follow.

The exhibition takes you through Sorbian history, from their roots as farmers through to the present day. They now receive official support for protecting their culture, language and identity, but in the past attempts have been made to ‘Germanize’ and suppress them.  

Much of the exhibition is devoted to traditional dress of the Sorbs, especially the women’s dresses, which vary according to the festival. There is also a small gallery of Sorbian art, and sections on Sorbian literature and education.

As a ‘minority language’ – Welsh – speaker myself, I was fascinated to see how this small community has survived so long. The language is very closely related to – and similar to – Czech and Polish. I’m fairly proficient in Czech, and was surprised how much I could understand.

Well worth a visit.

If you’ve ever shopped for mustard in a supermarket in Germany, you’ll almost certainly have seen some Bautzen mustard for sale.

Bautz’ner Senf is still produced in the town, and you can sample it and other local mustards at local restaurants. The best of these is Bautzener Senfstube on Schlossstrasse. When I visited, mustard was an ingredient on all bar one dish on the three course menu – and that was a dessert!

There is a small museum and shop next to the restaurant.

I got a wonderful surprise when walking through Bautzen suburbia to the Bautzen Memorial (see below).  The Art Nouveau Villa Weigang is located on the same street as the Stasi prison.

It’s a magnificent mansion, completed in 1903. At the time it was built it was one of the most famous private houses in Saxony. Since the fall of the GDR most of it has been restored, and it is now used as an events and wedding venue.

‘Bautzen’ was a feared word in Communist East Germany. It is home to one of the country’s largest prisons, Bautzen I, which was widely known as the Yellow Misery (Gelbes Elend).  The town was also home to Bautzen II, a prison run directly by the Stasi, the regime’s brutal secret police.

The Bautzen II is kept exactly as it was when the Stasi vacated the building in 1990. You can walk around each landing floor of the prison. Some of the cells are kept open to show the conditions in which the inmates were kept.

Many of those held at Bautzen II were political prisoners. If you disagreed with the SED (the Communist Party) and spoke out, this was where you would often end up. Conditions were brutal, intended as a deterrent to anyone who was contemplating speaking out against the Soviet-enforced regime .

When you visit, take a look at the Stasi vehicles in the garage to the right of the entrance. There are two specially adapted trucks. From the outside they look like ordinary old trucks. But the rear of each vehicle is fitted with five tiny cramped cells where prisoners would be transported.  It would have been a very intimidating and frightening experience.

This excellent café on Postplatz makes a great stop on the way between the station and old town.

The café has been open since 1908 under various names – it was even owned by the state during the GDR years. I stopped by for a warming coffee and cake before my journey to the station (and Dresden). And I’ve promised Faye that we’ll return there when the three of us visit Bautzen together.