AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Camburg is a small, sun-belt town of roughly 3,000 people sitting in a shell-limestone valley on the river Saale, exactly halfway between the university city of Jena and the cathedral town of Naumburg in Thuringia. Since 2008 it has been a district of the merged town of Dornburg-Camburg, but it has kept the loose, easygoing feel of a river landing that has long lived off passing trade and the people who stop to enjoy it.↗↗↗
Its signature sight is the Camburg itself: a lone 37-metre castle keep (Bergfried) crowning the hill over the southern edge of town, the only surviving fragment of a medieval fortress once wrecked in the Saxon Brother's War. Climb the tower for a sweeping view down the Saale valley, then wander the restored castle garden, the town's small museums, and the riverbank where paddlers launch boats for leisurely downstream trips.↗↗
A town split by a river
What makes Camburg unusual is that the Saale runs straight through it, and for much of the Middle Ages the town was fortified on both banks at once — one of very few places on the river to be defended from either side. On the left, the "Thuringian side," stand the parish church of St. Laurentius and the old Amtshof administrative court; on the right, the "Meissen side," rises the Camburg on its hill. The town's position on a crossing of the historic salt road (Salzstraße) bringing goods over the river from Sulza is the reason the fortress was built here in the first place.
