The Franckesche Stiftungen — the Francke Foundations — are a vast walled complex on the southern edge of the old town, founded in 1698 and built over the following decades as a Pietist educational utopia. The main building is one of the largest half-timbered houses in Europe; behind it stretch a network of school buildings, a baroque chapel, a long avenue of lime trees, and several museums.
The highlight for visitors is the Wunderkammer, an original 18th-century cabinet of curiosities with shells, taxidermy, ethnographic objects and scientific instruments arranged in a series of painted display cases. The library above is equally striking. UNESCO has placed the foundations on the German tentative list for World Heritage.