Things to Do in Leipzig in January

Gliding silently on a Segway past the grand facade of the New Town Hall, you'll cover the expansive grounds of the Battle of the Nations Monument and the winding paths of the Clara-Zetkin Park with ease, a mode of transport that makes the city's scale feel intimate. The electric hum of the machine is a quiet companion as you roll across bridges over the frozen-in-place waterways of the Pleisse River basin.

The open-top bus is less appealing now. But the enclosed, heated lower deck of the hop-on hop-off coach provides a moving vantage point to survey the city's silhouette, from the glass-and-steel towers of the new trade fair district to the twin spires of St. Thomas Church. You'll hear the narrated history of Leipzig's trade fair heritage and its role in the peaceful revolution while watching the January skyline scroll past the fogged-up window.

This private tour winds through the covered arcades of the Mädler Passage, where the scent of fine leather goods mingles with the echo of footsteps on marble, and into the courtyard of the Old Stock Exchange, its ornate Baroque sculpture looking pale against the dark winter sky. Your guide will point out the bullet pockmarks on the walls of the Old Town Hall, tangible scars from 1945, and explain the symbolism in the modern stained glass of St. Nicholas Church.

The South Cemetery in winter is a landscape of stark grandeur, where the leafless branches of ancient oaks form a tangled canopy over avenues of sculptural tombs and mausoleums for Leipzig's industrialists and composers. You'll feel the crunch of gravel underfoot as you stop before the austere granite slab for philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the elaborate Art Nouveau monument for publisher Anton Philipp Reclam, your breath visible in the still, cold air.

Note: This tour is for Wittenberg, a significant town approximately 70 kilometers from Leipzig. A January visit here is defined by the palpable history of the Reformation in the frigid air around the Castle Church door and the warm, wood-paneled interiors of Luther's home, where the smell of old paper and beeswax polish hangs heavy. The guided walk connects these sites across the quiet, cobbled market square, often empty save for the towering Christmas tree that may remain into early January.

This lively tour bypasses dry dates to focus on the tangible stories of Leipzig, like feeling the uneven stones of the Markt square where markets have been held for centuries and hearing the acoustics of the courtyard where Goethe set a scene for Faust. Guides use tablets to show historical images superimposed on the present-day facades, making the vanished medieval city walls and the roar of the 1989 Monday demonstrations visually immediate.