Halle Audio Tours

Halle earned its name and its wealth from salt. The Halloren, the city's legendary salt workers, dominated the Saale River economy for centuries and inspired the Halloren chocolate factory that still operates today as Germany's oldest. The Marktkirche on the market square, its four steeples visible across the city, was completed in 1554 and remains the heart of a old town that survived World War II in better shape than most German cities, saved partly by the actions of Felix von Luckner in the final days of the fighting.

Georg Friedrich Handel spent his first seventeen years here before departing for Hamburg and then London, where he wrote the Messiah.

His birthplace on Nikolaistrasse is now a museum, and the city has celebrated him with an annual festival since 1952. Less famous but equally striking is the Moritzburg, a late-Gothic castle from 1484 that now houses an excellent art collection, and the Giebichenstein castle ruins watching over the river just upstream.