The story of this place
Wittenberg was a small Saxon town when its Augustinian friar Martin Luther nailed — or, more likely, posted — his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the Castle Church on 31 October 1517, attacking the sale of indulgences and igniting the Protestant Reformation that would split Western Christianity. Luther lived, taught and wrote in the friary now called the Lutherhaus, the world's largest museum of Reformation history. Here in 1525 he married Katharina von Bora, a nun who had escaped her convent hidden in a herring barrel, scandalising Europe by turning the monastery into a family home. Their table talk was transcribed by students; the panelled 'Lutherstube' where it happened survives, and the whole town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.