Wolfenbüttel is a small town in Lower Saxony, about 12 kilometres south of Braunschweig, best known for two things: one of the finest research libraries in the world, and being the home of Jägermeister. The combination is unusual but somehow fitting — this is a place that takes its intellectual heritage and its herbal liqueur with equal seriousness.
The Herzog August Bibliothek is the town's defining institution. Founded in the 17th century, it was for a time the largest library in the world and contains one of the most important collections of medieval manuscripts in existence, including the Gospels of Henry the Lion — a 12th-century illuminated manuscript of extraordinary beauty. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz worked here as librarian from 1691 to 1716; Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the Enlightenment playwright and religious philosopher, served as librarian from 1770 until his death in 1781 and lived in the Lessing-Haus on the adjacent square.
The old town is remarkably well preserved — Wolfenbüttel escaped serious World War II bombing — with half-timbered houses lining the streets around the Stadtmarkt, the Marienkirche, and the ducal Schloss Wolfenbüttel. The Kleines Venedig — "Little Venice" — is a district of canal-side half-timbered houses. The Jägermeister visitor centre at the distillery explains the production of the 56-herb liqueur that has made this town's name familiar in bars across the world.