What to See in Göttingen - Top Sights and Attractions

Botanical garden in Göttingen, Germany. The Old Botanical Garden of Göttingen University, with an area of 4.5 hectares, is an historic botanical garden maintained by the University of Göttingen. It is located in the Altstadt at Untere Karspüle 1, adjacent to the city wall, Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany, and open daily.

The garden was established in 1736 by Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777) as a hortus medicus, and gradually extended via adjacent plots within and without the city wall. By 1806 the garden had a tropical greenhouse, orangery, and cycad house; to these were added in 1830 an Araceae greenhouse, and again in 1857 a new orangery (converted in 1910 to a fern house). Although the garden's collection of tropical plants was destroyed in the World War II, it was replenished postwar and augmented by a major collection of wild plants from central Europe. In 1967, as the university's natural science faculty began its relocation to a site north of the city center, two new botanical gardens were there established (the Neuer Botanischer Garten der Universität Göttingen and the Forstbotanischer Garten und Arboretum), but the old garden continues. In one of the most recent changes, its systematic garden was converted in 2003–2007 from a century-old taxonomic structure to one reflecting contemporary molecular genetics.

Today the garden contains 17,500 accessions representing about 14,000 species, and it forms one of the largest and most significant scientific collections of plants in Germany. It contains major collections of bromeliads (about 1,500 species and varieties, including 500 species of Tillandsia alone), cacti (approximately 1,500 species), ferns (about 550 species, including some of the rarest ferns of Central Europe), marsh and aquatic plants (ca. 300 species), and mosses (100 species). Its major areas include a systemic garden (1,200 species), arboretum, pond, rockery, useful and medicinal plant garden, and a weed collection. Eight greenhouses contain bromeliads, orchids, carnivorous plants, plants of the tropical rain forest, tropical water plants, cycads, aroids, cacti and other succulent plants, and ferns. Three tunnels through the city wall link the garden's inner and outer sections.^[1]

St. Martin's is a Lutheran church in Groß Ellershausen, Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. It is significant as possibly retaining the oldest existing structure, its tower, in southern Lower Saxony. While the details of the origin of the church building have been lost in the mist of history, architectural analysis indicates that the Romanesque church tower was most likely built in the tenth or eleventh century. The remains of a hearth on the second floor have led to the conclusion that the tower was originally a Wohnturm of a titled family, probably the Herren von Ellershausen, which lived there at the time. The church's ship is much younger, probably having been built or re-built during the Barocque era. It was repaired in 1838..

Records from 1608 and 1610 indicate there were two bells in the church. The larger of the two was melted down during the First World War as part of the national effort to obtain metals for military purposes. In 1922, two steel bells were dedicated as replacements. Then in 2003 three new bronze bells of unequal sizes were installed. Each of the bells has a Latin word inscribed (Soli, Deo and Gloria, meaning "only to God the honor"). The bells are rung by an electrically run system, with various combinations and sequences signifying various things.

It currently houses a Lutheran congregation.^[8]

Botanical garden in Göttingen, Germany. The Forstbotanischer Garten und Pflanzengeographisches Arboretum der Universität Göttingen, often called the Forstbotanischer Garten und Arboretum, is a 40 hectares arboretum and botanical garden maintained by the University of Göttingen. It is located at Büsgenweg 2, Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany, immediately adjacent to the New Botanical Garden, and open to the public daily.

The arboretum dates to 1870 when it was created as a forestry school by the Hannoversch Münden Faculty of Forestry. Over the years it fell into disuse but was revived and substantially modified in 1970/71 when the forestry education and research facilities were transferred to Göttingen. At that time today's garden and arboretum were begun, with first plantings taking place in Autumn 1970 in the Japan section. Early plantings focused on wild species but after 1980 cultivated varieties were increasingly planted.

Today the garden and arboretum contain over 2000 species on the forestry school campus. Its major sections garden are as follows: geographic collections of trees from China, Japan, Korea, North America, and the Caucasus, which together represent about 45 genera with 800 species, subspecies, and varieties; the forest botanical garden (7 hectares) which contains about 140 plant genera with about 1100 wild species, subspecies, and varieties; and a tertiary forest area.^[9]

University library in Göttingen, Germany. The Göttingen State and University Library is the library for Göttingen University as well as for the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and is the state library for the German State of Lower Saxony. One of the largest German academic libraries, it has numerous national as well as international projects in librarianship and in the provision of research infrastructure services. In the year 2002, the SUB Göttingen won the German Library of the Year award. Its current director is Wolfram Horstmann.

The library works under a dispersed system, with six branch libraries located in various academic departments, supplementing the central collection housed in the Central Library (construction completed in 1992) on the main campus and the Historical Library Building in downtown. The Historical Building holds manuscripts, rare books, maps, and a significant history-of-science collection and works in its special collections. In addition, its original core, the SS. Peter and Paul's Church, Göttingen, has been made into an exhibition and lecture center through adaptive reuse and reconstruction.

As of December 2016, the SUB Göttingen holds some 8 million media units, among which are 5.9 million volumes, 1.6 million microforms, 50,000 licensed electronic journals as well as 126,000 further digital media, 327,000 maps and more than 14,000 manuscripts, 3,100 incunabula and 400 Nachlässe (literary remains). It possesses a Gutenberg Bible (one of only four perfect vellum copies known to exist).

The SUB Göttingen has maintained the Göttingen Center for Retrospective Digitization (GDZ) since 1997. It also operates the Göttingen University Press, which has been expanding since its foundation in 2003 and is committed to the Open access principle. Since its establishment in 2004, the library's Department for Research and Development has been instrumental in the development of new services such as the establishment of virtual research environments and infrastructures for scientific data and services.

Within the framework of the Collection of German Prints, the SUB Göttingen collects publications of the 18th century. Within the Specialised Information Services Programme funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), it operates the specialised information services Mathematics (since 2015, with the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB Hannover)), Anglo-American Culture (since 2016, with the Library of the J. F. Kennedy Institute of the Free University of Berlin), Geosciences of the Solid Earth (since 2016, with the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ Potsdam)) and Finno-Ugric / Uralic Languages, Literature and Culture (since 2017). In cooperation with the University Library "Georgius Agricola" of the Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg (UBF), the SUB Göttingen maintains a large online collection of geoscience-related materials, the GEO-Library Experts Online, or GEO-LEO.

The SUB Göttingen coordinates the establishment of a nationwide competence center for the licensing of electronic resources (together with the Berlin State Library and the Head Office of the Common Library Network (GBV). Since 2014, it has operated the Göttingen eResearch Alliance (together with the University Computing Centre (GWDG). The library coordinates the DARIAH-DE project for the development of research infrastructures in Germany, and supports the consortial establishment of open access research infrastructures (OpenAIRE 2020, COAR) across Europe and worldwide.^[11]

Public university in Göttingen, Germany. The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded in 1734 by George II, King of Great Britain and Elector of Hanover, and starting classes in 1737, the Georgia Augusta was conceived to promote the ideals of the Enlightenment. It is the oldest university in the state of Lower Saxony and the largest in student enrollment, which stands at around 31,600.

Home to many noted figures, it represents one of Germany's historic and traditional institutions. As of October 2021, 45 Nobel Prize winners have been affiliated with the University of Göttingen as alumni, faculty members or researchers.

The University of Göttingen was previously supported by the German Universities Excellence Initiative, holds memberships to the U15 Group of major German research universities and to the Coimbra Group of major European research universities. Furthermore, the university maintains strong connections with major research institutes based in Göttingen, such as those of the Max Planck Society and the Leibniz Association. With approximately 9 million media units, the Göttingen State and University Library ranks among the largest libraries in Germany.^[13]

Botanical garden in Göttingen, Germany. The Neuer Botanischer Garten der Universität Göttingen, also known as the Experimenteller Botanischer Garten, is a research botanical garden maintained by the University of Göttingen. It is located immediately adjacent to the university's Forstbotanischer Garten und Arboretum at Grisebachstraße 1, Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany, and open daily without charge.

The garden was established by Prof. Heinz Ellenberg (1913–1997) in 1967 as an experimental facility to augment the historic Alter Botanischer Garten der Universität Göttingen. In 2009 its name was changed to the Experimenteller Botanischer Garten.

The garden contains special collections of Centaurea and related genera, native flora of Central Europe, holarctic forest vegetation, endangered wild plants, and rare weeds, as well as an alpine garden (5000 m²), wild rose collection, and pond (400 m²) with aquatic and swamp plants.^[14]

The Göttinger Kiessee is a dredged lake in the south of Göttingen. It originated from a gravel open pit mine and today serves together with its shore zones as a local recreation area. Until the end of the 19th century, this area was part of the floodplain of the nearby Leine River and consisted mainly of wet meadows. The northern part was on the territory of the city of Göttingen, the southeastern part on that of Geismar and the southwestern part on that of the municipality of Rosdorf. Since 1964, Geismar has been incorporated into Göttingen and after an exchange of territory in 2018, the lake is entirely on Göttingen territory. Gravel mining began in the north at the beginning of the 20th century. Today's sand road formed the access road at that time. In the 1950s, the lake still consisted of two separate parts. The clearly narrower middle of the water reminds us of this. For centuries, a connecting road from Geismar via Stegemühle to Rosdorf led across this point. On the Geismar side, a part of the paved route has been preserved. On the Rosdorf side, the connection was made via the street Am Ascherberg. At the beginning of the 1960s, the bridge between the two lakes was demolished and the entire area was turned into a recreational area.