Görlitz

Where it sits. Görlitz is the easternmost town in Germany, on the west bank of the Lusatian Neisse in Saxony, with roughly 56,000 inhabitants. The river is the border: cross the pedestrian Altstadtbrücke, rebuilt in 2003–2004 and opened on 20 October 2004, and you are in Zgorzelec, Poland, which was the eastern half of the same town until 1945. Since Poland joined the Schengen area in December 2007 there is nothing to stop at, and no sign on the bridge tells you that you have changed countries. Dresden lies about 100 kilometres west, Prague around 150 south, Wrocław 160 east.

The story behind it. First mentioned in 1071 as Goreliz, the town grew rich on the Via Regia, the medieval trade road between the Rhineland and Kraków, and on the cloth trade; from 1346 it was a leading member of the Lusatian League. It passed between Bohemian, Hungarian, Saxon and, after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Prussian rule, and spent 130 years as a Silesian town. The Second World War left it almost untouched — no significant bombing — and the 1945 Oder–Neisse line cut off its eastern districts instead. Four decades as a GDR border town then meant no money for demolition or modernisation. The result is one of the most complete historic townscapes in Germany, running from Gothic through Renaissance, Baroque, Gründerzeit and Jugendstil, with several thousand protected buildings. Since 1995 an anonymous donor has sent the town more than €500,000 every year for restoration, a total now well past €10 million, and nobody has ever established who it is.

On screen — and the correction that matters. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) was not shot in Budapest, and its Republic of Zubrowka is not Hungary. Wes Anderson filmed in eastern Germany between January and March 2013, at Studio Babelsberg and, above all, here. The hotel's lobby — the pink, tiered, glass-roofed heart of the film — is the atrium of the Görlitzer Warenhaus, a Jugendstil department store of 1913 that had closed in 2009 and stood empty; the production took over the building, put its offices and camera and wardrobe stores on the top two floors, and hung a ceiling of stretched muslin lit by twenty large lamps so that the light appeared to fall through the skylight. Anderson thought seriously about buying the place to save it from demolition. The hotel's exterior, meanwhile, exists nowhere: it is a scale model about three metres high, built at Babelsberg by Simon Weisse's team, with photographs of the Warenhaus interior glued behind its windows to fake the lights. Elsewhere in Saxony the film used the Zwinger and the Pfunds dairy in Dresden, Hainewalde Manor and Schloss Waldenburg for the Schloss Lutz, and Osterstein Castle in Zwickau.

Görlitz has enough other credits to have earned the nickname Görliwood:

• Inglourious Basterds (2009) — Eli Roth's film-within-a-film Nation's Pride was shot on the Untermarkt and Obermarkt, standing in for occupied France.
• The Reader (2008) used the town for the earlier, small-town sections of the story.
• The Book Thief (2013) filmed its wartime German street scenes here.

What you actually see today. The Untermarkt is the finest square, ringed by arcaded merchant houses and split by the Renaissance town hall stair; the Schönhof of 1526, one of the oldest civic Renaissance buildings in Germany, now houses the Silesian Museum. The Peterskirche above the river holds the Sun Organ of 1703 by Eugenio Casparini, played in short recitals several times a week. The Holy Sepulchre complex on the northern edge, begun in 1465 under mayor Georg Emmerich, is a scale model of the Jerusalem original and one of the strangest survivals in Saxony. The synagogue of 1911, one of very few in eastern Germany not destroyed in 1938, reopened in 2021 as a cultural venue. The Warenhaus itself remains between uses, opening for occasional tours, events and Christmas markets while redevelopment plans come and go.

Getting there and timing. Direct trains run from Dresden in about ninety minutes and from Berlin via Cottbus; the Wrocław line crosses the river to Zgorzelec. Distances in the old town are short and walkable, though the lanes are cobbled and often stepped. Prices are markedly lower than in western Germany, which is one reason the town has drawn both retirees and film crews. Film-location walks are run by local guides, and the tourist office publishes a map of shooting sites. December brings the Silesian Christmas market on the Obermarkt, and it is worth crossing the bridge into Zgorzelec at least once for the view back at the German bank.