Göttingen is a university town in southern Lower Saxony with about 130,000 inhabitants, roughly a third of whom are students. The Georgia Augusta university, founded in 1737, has shaped the town so thoroughly that the two are almost inseparable — forty-five Nobel Prize winners have worked or studied here, and a statue of a goose girl in the market square has been kissed by graduating doctors for generations.
The old town is compact and walkable. Timber-framed houses line the lanes around the market square; the Altes Rathaus anchors it and the Johanniskirche tower gives a good view over the rooftops. The Paulinerkirche, now part of the university library, is the oldest substantial building. Everything students need — bars, secondhand bookshops, cheap cafes — crowds around the centre. Beyond the ring road, the Stadtwald offers forests and trails close enough for an afternoon walk.
The university museums are good for a half-day on their own: the ethnographic Sammlung für Völkerkunde, with its Cook-voyage Pacific holdings, the old Studentenkarzer where misbehaving students were locked up for a few days, and a long list of scientific collections. Carl Friedrich Gauss is buried in the Albanifriedhof just outside the old wall.
The student population keeps the bar scene lively and relatively cheap. Venues come and go, but the cluster of bars along the streets south of the market square is reliably active through the week.