Jolly good discount
YOU could be laughing all the way to the bank with a week’s stay at the Jolly Beach Resort for £949. The all-inclusive deal is based on two staying at the Antigua hotel and is almost half price. Departures from London are available on dates in August, September and October. For bookings, call 08444 997 645 or go to caribbeanwarehouse.co.uk. IT is 500 years since Martin Luther shook up history with his “95 theses” said to have been nailed to a church door. Today you can indulge youself in the German towns that inspired him. Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt are both regions of former East Germany, south and east of Berlin. They are easy-going places with open wheatfields and unhurried villages.
The stranglehold of communism held back development here, which means many of the historic buildings that survived Second World War bombs remained as if in a time warp.
The roads are empty, the towns are unspoiled, and the important ones have scrubbed up nicely for the 500th anniversary.
Unesco-registered Eisleben is where Luther was born – and died. SEE: Luther’s birthplace museum is one of the oldest in the world, established in 1693. Details of this and other key sites at martinluther.de/en. To get a better education the young Luther was sent to live with relatives in the handsome town of Eisenach, which then had 3,000 inhabitants – 300 of whom were monks and nuns.
He became a chorister in the church and attended a local school, all of which is detailed in the town’s Luther museum. Not far away is another museum, this time dedicated to composer JS Bach, who was born here.
Eisenach itself is set in a bucolic forested river valley where wild boar and deer still roam, so there is a lot more to explore than simply Bach and Luther relics. EAT: The candlelit, sawdust-floored Lutherstube – Luther Room – serves a Luther-era meal of meat by the metre and lard by the yard, with minstrels in jerkins providing entertainment. From 20 euros pp, lutherstuben.de. Luther, on his parent’s instigation, enrolled to study law in the Thuringian capital Erfurt.
One day he was returning on horseback from a visit home when he was caught in a storm and a lightning bolt just missed him.
Believing he was lucky to escape alive, he decided on the spot to become a monk. SEE: A stone monument at Stotternheim, just outside Erfurt, marks the spot. For directions, look up Stotternheim on lutherfinder.de. The elegant city where Luther spent his student years has pedestrianised narrow streets lined with Renaissance and Baroque merchants’ houses and churches.
The architectural head-turner is the 700-yearold Kramerbrucke – Merchant’s Bridge – topped by houses and craftsmen’s shops. It looks like it would be more at home in Florence.
Bridges like these, still with their own community living above the arches, are very rare. Yet because this one is off the beaten track in eastern Germany, comparatively few people get to see it. STAY: The Augustiner monastery where the young Luther had his cell is now an informal hotel, with a small museum.
There’s a soaring-but-simple monastery church, for anyone who wants to do a Lutheran conversionco themselves. Rooms from £35. See augustinerkloster.de/en.au ThisTh small town on the Elbe in Saxony-Anhalt wasw the young monk’s first posting, and where he was to spend most of his adult life.
Today it remains a pearl of medievalism, lined w with pastel-painted houses and with a fine 16th ce century town hall. Luther’s home in a former m monastery is Unesco-registered. Some of the ro rooms have been preserved exactly as they were, while others are rich in paintings by Lucas Cranach which document Luther’s life.
The old door of the castle church on which he is supposed to have nailed his 95 theses – a tale no now widely doubted – has been replaced by a so sober metal one, embossed with his words. SEE:S The Luther Panorama is a snapshot of