Posted by Janet Ashton on 3/10/2011, 7:52 pm, in reply to "Royal author Thera Coppens & Sophie, Grand Duchess v. Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach"
Weimar is indeed a really great town, full of sights and atmosphere, and close also to Meiningen and Eisenach - a great area for a holiday. The family vault is very intriguing (I always gravitate to graves, as you'll gather from my obsession with the Kaisergruft 
) as Goethe is in there and a body identified as Schiller, though in fact it isn't him. Maria Pavlovna's big Russian Chapel sticks out of one side, so she is both in the tomb and in the Chapel on Orthodox land.
The other thing that Sophie's husband did of particular note was restore the Wartburg - and his mother, Maria Pavlovna, was also instumental in this. I know not everyone likes the 19th century "improvements" - e.g. the colourful images of the Minnesingers etc - but I do.....
P. S. Erfurt is also a nice town, though not of course for reasons connected to this particular family.
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