Music and literature – alongside castles and Bauhaus

Most important multi-discipline theaters in the country are the German National Theater in Weimar, Theater Altenburg-Gera and the Staatstheater Meiningen. Traditional theaters are still operated today in Arnstadt, Nordhausen, Rudolstadt and Eisenach. New buildings from recent times include the Theater Erfurt and the Vogtlandhalle Greiz. The largest open-air stage is the Steinbach-Langenbach Nature Theater in the Thuringian Forest

The literary history of Thuringia is inextricably determined by the Weimar Classic. She led German-language literature in the 18th century with the circle of poets around Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. Johann Gottfried Herder, Karl Ludwig von Knebel and Christoph Martin Wieland can also be classified in this era. They concentrated at the Weimar court around Duke Karl August and his mother Anna Amalia. The Bach family with their most famous son, Johann Sebastian Bach, comes from Wechmar near Gotha.

In the field of fine arts, the Bauhaus in Weimar was particularly important in Thuringia. It shaped the style of the world in the 1920s and attracted painters such as Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Johannes Itten and Oskar Schlemmer as well as architects such as Walter Gropius, Henry van de Velde and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to the Free State. But painters such as Lucas Cranach the Elder or Otto Dix and the sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider also worked in Thuringia.

The most famous castle in the country is the Wartburg above Eisenach, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was once the seat of the Landgraves of Thuringia and later the place where Martin Luther was hidden from the imperial authorities and translated parts of the Bible into German.

The UNESCO World Heritage includes the "Classic Weimar", the Bauhaus in Weimar, the Wartburg near Eisenach and the Hainich National Park as part of the European beech forests. The state capital Erfurt has important cultural and historical sites with the cathedral, the Krämerbrücke and the oldest preserved synagogue in Central Europe. The largest city is Erfurt, other important centers are Jena, Gera and Weimar.