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Comprehensive exhibition illustrating the development of optical instruments and technology through the ages, focusing on the work of physicist Ernst Abbe and entrepreneurs Carl Zeiss and Otto Schott and their respective companies. English-language guides available by prior appointment (€40 for the whole group), audioguides in English, French, German, Italian and Japanese (€1 per person plus €5 deposit).
The Deutsches Optisches Museum Jena is a science and technology museum displaying optical instruments from eight centuries. It gives a technical and cultural-historical survey of the development of optical instruments. The development of the city Jena to the centre of the optical industries since the mid-19th-century is integrated in the exhibition, connected with the lifeworks of Ernst Abbe, Carl Zeiss and Otto Schott. In cooperation with the art club Jena non-optical themes are offered in special exhibitions. Before the opening of the Zeiss Museum of Optics in Oberkochen in 2014, the Deutsches Optisches Museum Jena was the only museum of its kind in Germany.
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Jena philharmonic orchestra
Classical orchestra that cooperates with a philharmonic choir, boys choir and madrigal choir. Their concerts usually take place at the Volkshaus.
"house of the people"
Funded by the Carl Zeiss foundation and opened in 1903, it was one of Germany's first free educational and cultural venues targeting working-class people. Today, the imposing historicist building is still used for meetings, cultural events, educational presentations as well as being home to the Ernst Abbe library and the Jenaer Philharmonie orchestra.
Anatomy Tower
Ruined round tower that used to be part of Jena's town fortification. The remaining base once supported an anatomical theatre (hence the name) where courses for medical students took place and Goethe (who was not just a writer but also a scientist) did research on the premaxillary bone of humans and elephants.
Friedrich Schiller, one of the greatest classical German poets and playwrights lived in Jena from 1789 to 1799 with his wife Charlotte von Lengefeld, a native of nearby Rudolstadt. While Schiller's downtown home is lost, the garden house that he bought in 1797 to spend the Summers with his family outside the town (at that time) still exists. Some of Schiller's most notable works—the dramas "Wallenstein", "Mary Stuart" and "The Maid of Orleans" as well as several ballads—were created (at least in parts) in the study of this house. It now serves as a museum run by the Friedrich Schiller University with an exhibition dedicated to Schiller's years in Jena.
John's Tower
Gothic gate tower, another—much better preserved—part of the medieval fortifactions. It is linked with the nearby magazine (Pulverturm) by a reconstructed wall walk.
formerly known as Intershop Tower
144.5-m-high office tower built in the early 1970s for the university and intended by the communist rulers to be a dominant part of the "socialist city". It was designed by Hermann Henselmann (architect of the Berlin television tower) to remind of an upright telescope (alluding to Jena's optical industries). It was renovated and modernised around 2000, receiving its characteristic glass façade. Main tenant of offices is the e-commerce developer Intershop. There is a restaurant on the highest floor and an observation platform on the top.