Halle: Germany

Halle: Germany
Halle (also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish from Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia) is the largest town in the German Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt. It lies in the southern part of the state, on the river Saale.
– Sights in Halle – Giebichenstein Castle, first mentioned in 961, west of the city centre on a hill above the Saale river. – Moritzburg, a newer castle, built in 1503; residence of the bishops of Magdeburg; destroyed in the Thirty Years’ War, then a ruin for centuries, rebuilt in 1904; today an Art Gallery. – Cathedral, a steepleless building, originally a church within a Dominican monastery (1271). – Halle-Neustadt, Mostly built in the 1960s Halle-Neustadt lies just to the East of Halle. A classic example of how mean, state sponsored housing, on a huge scale, combined with brutalist architecture and “one-size-fits-all� social engineering failed to achieve its aims – but did convice most of the people that lived there that moving to another city was a good idea. Halle-Neustadt is sometimes referred to as “Hanoi� – in an ironic play on words referring to the heavily bombed capital of Vietnam.
History
The name Halle derives from the Celtic word for salt, like that of its namesake in Westphalia, Hallein and Hallstatt in Austria and Schwäbisch Hall in Germany; while the name of the river Saale contains the Germanic root for salt. Salt-making has taken place in Halle since at least the Bronze age.
The town was first mentioned in 806. It became a part of the bishopric principality of Magdeburg in the 10th century and remained so until 1680, when Brandenburg annexed it together with Magdeburg.
After World War II Halle served as the capital of the short-lived administrative region of Saxony-Anhalt (until 1952), when the East German government abolished its “Länder�. As a part of East Germany (until 1990), it functioned as the capital of the administrative district (“Bezirk�) of Halle. When Saxony-Anhalt was re-established as a Bundesland, Magdeburg became the capital.