Less than 10 miles from Leipzig, Rötha is an 11th-century village that really came into its own in the 18th ...
Next to the church is "Johann Sebastian Bach Platz", even though the composer had no real connection with the place.
However, the church does contain two organs by Bach's contemporary the great Gottfried Silbermann,
and Mendelssohn came to play them in 1840.
The village has seen better days.
The butcher's shop looks as though it's been in disrepair for a while;
with neat irony there's now an oriental kebab place next door.
We didn't fancy the "Three Roses" ...
... so we ate in the cafe across the street.
A mile down the road, in neighbouring Espenhain, there was a most imposing industrial building for sale,
complete with private railway access ...
... but that too has seen better days and is (rather typical of the area)
now overgrown and used for back-room washing-machine sales and the like.
In East-German times it used to be the HQ of a brown-coal empire,
so its present state is probably an improvement, at least for the environment.
