Goseck is a municipality lying on the river

Saale The Saale (), also known as the Saxon Saale ( ) and Thuringian Saale (), is a river in Germany and a left-bank tributary of the Elbe. It is not to be confused with the smaller Fränkische Saale, Franconian Saale, a right-bank tributary of the M ...

, in the

Burgenlandkreis Burgenlandkreis () is a district in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Its area is . History The district was established as Landkreis Burgenland by the merger of the former Burgenlandkreis and Landkreis Weißenfels as part of the reform of 2007. ...

district of the German state of

Saxony-Anhalt Saxony-Anhalt ( ; ) is a States of Germany, state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia and Lower Saxony. It covers an area of and has a population of 2.17 million inhabitants, making it the List of German states ...

Geography

Goseck is located on the north bank of the Saale, about halfway between

Naumburg Naumburg () is a town in (and the administrative capital of) the district Burgenlandkreis, in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Central Germany (cultural area), Central Germany. It has a population of around 33,000. The Naumburg Cathedral became a UNES ...

and Weißenfels. The municipality consists of the settlements Goseck and Markröhlitz.

History

Early period

The first evidence of human settlement is from the

Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

period, the Goseck circle, dating to approximately the 5th millennium BC, discovered by aerial photographs from the 1990s and, since 2003, regarded as the oldest

observatory An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysics, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed. Th ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

. It consists of a circular Henge-construction with a diameter of 75 m. It marks the beginning of a millennia-old astronomical tradition known also from the Nebra skydisk, discovered in 1999, only 25 km distant therefrom. By means of a visor mechanism, the operators were able to, ''e.g.'', accurately determine the times of the summer and winter

solstice A solstice is the time when the Sun reaches its most northerly or southerly sun path, excursion relative to the celestial equator on the celestial sphere. Two solstices occur annually, around 20–22 June and 20–22 December. In many countries ...

. The reconstructed observatory was opened on the winter solstice, 21 December 2005, with great pageantry, including a spectacular fireworks display.

Modern times

Goseck grew in the fields surrounding the 11th-century monastery St. Mary and St. Michael. Originally an early medieval castle, first mentioned as ''Gozzesburg'' in the ''

Hersfeld Tithe Register The Hersfeld Tithe Register (German: ''Hersfelder Zehntverzeichnis'') is a list of the places and castles in the Friesenfeld Gau (territory) and in Hassegau, from which Hersfeld Abbey received tithes. The original document dates from between 881 ...

'' of 881, the

Saxon The Saxons, sometimes called the Old Saxons or Continental Saxons, were a Germanic people of early medieval "Old" Saxony () which became a Carolingian " stem duchy" in 804, in what is now northern Germany. Many of their neighbours were, like th ...

palatial county

seat of government The seat of government is (as defined by ''Brewer's Politics'') "the building, complex of buildings or the city from which a government exercises its authority". In most countries, the nation's Capital city, capital is also seat of its governmen ...

was located here. Schloss Goseck

Economics and infrastructure

Traffic

The only road access to Goseck is from Markröhlitz, from which local roads lead to Naumburg, Weißenfels and Pettstädt.

References

Burgenlandkreis {{Burgenlandkreis-geo-stub