Every design for Leipzig

Leipzig sits at the southern edge of the North German Plain, where the White Elster is joined by the Pleiße and the Parthe, and its rivers and canals still thread through everyday life. It is the largest city in Saxony, and it has the easy, unhurried confidence of a place that has been trading, printing books and making music for centuries.

The Thomaskirche is where many visitors begin, drawn by Bach and the boys' choir, but locals are just as likely to be heading for a drink in the Moritzbastei, a coffee near the Altes Rathaus or a long afternoon at one of the most modern zoos in Europe. Around the centre stretch streets of grand Gründerzeit houses, and on summer weekends people head out to the new lakes made from old open-cast mines.

The city has changed fast and grown younger, yet some things stay put. Step off a train into the vast hall of the Hauptbahnhof and you know at once that you are back.