Halle (Saale)
— — the five towers Handel walked under.
Not only on a wall.
“A salt-trading city on the Saale river, the birthplace of Handel and the site of one of Germany's oldest universities. Five towers rise from the market square: four on the Marktkirche, where Handel was baptized in 1685, and the free-standing Red Tower beside them. The Francke Foundations still teach. The salt still runs in the place name. — from the studio
Halle (Saale), on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Halle (Saale) sits on the Saale river in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, about 35 kilometres northwest of Leipzig. The metropolitan population is roughly 240,000, making it the largest city in the state. Halle has been continuously inhabited since the Bronze Age and grew through salt production (the name itself derives from a pre-Germanic word for salt) that ran from the Halloren springs at the city's centre through the medieval Hanseatic trade. Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, formed in 1817 by merging the 1694 Halle university with Luther's 1502 Wittenberg, sits at the centre.
The Marktkirche Unser Lieben Frauen carries four spires above the central market: two paired sets, the western from a 12th-century Romanesque church, the eastern Gothic from the early 16th century. Beside it stands the Roter Turm, a free-standing late-Gothic bell tower completed in 1506, 84 metres tall, the only one of its kind in central Germany. Together the five towers, die fünf Türme, are the city's silhouette. George Frideric Handel was baptized in the Marktkirche on February 24, 1685, the day after his birth in a house three streets away.
Halle observes Handel every year. The Handel-Festspiele has run since 1922, currently in late May and early June, with performances at the Handel-Haus on Große Nikolaistraße (Handel's birthplace, a museum since 1948), the Oper Halle, the Marktkirche, and venues across the city. The Handel-Haus holds one of the largest collections of original Handel manuscripts and historical keyboard instruments anywhere. Outside the festival, the composer's statue stands at the centre of the Markt, facing his baptismal church and the five towers that frame it.