Upper Lusatia Upper Lusatia Travel Guide: Best Hotels, Restaurants & Experiences

Upper Lusatia stretches across Germany's easternmost corner, where Saxony meets Poland and the Czech Republic. The region's Sorbian heritage — a Slavic minority with their own language, traditions, and distinctive folk architecture — gives the area a cultural texture found nowhere else in Germany. Görlitz, split by the Neisse River with its Polish twin Zgorzelec, preserves one of Europe's most intact collections of Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque townhouses, having escaped wartime destruction entirely.

The landscape shifts from the sandstone formations of Zittau Mountains in the south to the engineered lakes of former lignite mines now transformed into beach resorts. Bautzen, the unofficial Sorbian capital, draws visitors to its medieval fortress perched above the Spree, while smaller towns like Herrnhut — birthplace of the Moravian Church — and the weaving village of Großschönau maintain crafts dating back centuries. Local kitchens favour robust preparations: Sorbian wedding soup, poppy-seed cake, and smoked fish from the Lusatian ponds.