A town in Saxony, on the Gera, 14 m. W. of Weimar, formerly capital of Thuringia, and has many interesting buildings, amongst the number the 14th-century Gothic cathedral with its great bell, weighing 13½ tons, and cast in 1497; the monastery of St. Augustine (changed into an orphanage in 1819), in which Luther was a monk; the Academy of Sciences, and the library with 60,000 vols. and 1000 MSS.; various textile factories flourish.