At Leipzig's Ethnological Museum, you can plunge into an eye-opening journey through the cultures of the world. 　　It's in the Grassi museum complex. ...

　　The happy marriage of a panorama (a giant 360-degree painting) and a gasometer (a giant gas tank) is a panometer. The unusual concept is the brainchild of Berlin-based artist Yadegar Asisi, who uses paper and pencil and computer technology to create bafflingly detailed monumental scenes drawn from nature or history....

　　This church has Romanesque and Gothic roots, but since 1797 has sported a striking neoclassical interior with palm-like pillars and cream-coloured pews. While the design is certainly gorgeous, the church is most famous for playing a key role in the nonviolent movement that led to the downfall of the East...

　　This imposing modernist glass cube is the home of Leipzig's fine art museum and its world-class collection of paintings from the 15th century to today, including works by Caspar David Friedrich, Cranach, Munch and Monet. Highlights include rooms dedicated to native sons Max Beckmann, Max Klinger and Neo Rauch. Exhibits...

　　In the GDR the walls had ears, as is chillingly documented in this exhibit in the former Leipzig headquarters of the East German secret police (the Stasi), a building known as the Runde Ecke (Round Corner). English-language audioguides (€4) aid in understanding the all-German displays on propaganda, preposterous disguises, cunning...

　　Leipzig's largest cemetery is a vast and beautiful park, filled with rosebay shrubs, populated by squirrels, rabbits and foxes and centred on a building that looks like a Disneyland castle, but is in fact a purpose-built crematorium. A monument to antifascists who died at the hands of the Nazis can...

　　The university-run Museen im Grassi harbours three fantastic collections that are often overlooked, despite being a five-minute walk from Augustusplatz. At the stellar Musikinstrumenten-Museum you can discover music from five centuries in rarity-filled exhibits and an interactive sound laboratory. The Museum für Völkerkunde takes you on an eye-opening journey through...

　　This fascinating, enormous and well-curated exhibit covers the political history of the GDR, from division and dictatorship to fall-of-the-Wall ecstasy and post-Wende blues. It's essential viewing for anyone seeking to understand the late country's political power apparatus, the systematic oppression of regime critics, milestones in inter-German and international relations, and...