Three blocks away from where I'm staying in Leipzig you will find, on three adjacent blocks, the once and future courthouse (a museum under the DDR); the university library; the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy School for Music and Theatre; and behind that, the Institute for the Art of the Book. (Leipzig was once home to most of Germany's publishing houses.) It's intense. All these were built in the second half of the nineteenth century, in Leipzig's glory days; they all have impressive façades with columns and pediments and grand staircases. The courthouse is nearly as broad as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and much taller, with a one large and three small cupolas. The 1907 trial for high treason of Karl Liebknecht was held in it, as was the show trial of those accused of setting fire to the Reichstag in 1933. Karl Liebknecht grew up on an important boulevard (now named after him) just a block away. The university library is exquisite; its lobby is a bit like the lobby of the New York Public Library, but smaller and not so white or severe.
These grand buildings mark the entrance to the "Musikviertel," the music neighborhood, where most streets are named after composers. This used to be the neighborhood not only of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater, but also of the Gewandhaus, which stood in front of the university library. When I first came to Leipzig that spot was a parking lot; now there's a totally nondescript university building. I'd been told that the Gewandhaus was completely destroyed in WWII, but a plaque on the new building says otherwise: "the ruins of the old Gewandhaus lay here until March, 1968, when they were dynamited." That's the same year the grand old university building, damaged but still functional, was dynamited, along with the sixteenth-century chapel that stood next to it. (See www.paulinerkirche.de for information on efforts to rebuild it.) The plaque listed famous conductors who had given concerts in the old Gewandhaus, and spoke of its legendary acoustics. It also showed a picture of the building with its admirable motto: RES SEVERA VERUM GAUDIUM. "True joy is a serious thing." (At first I thought it meant, "A difficult thing is the true joy," which would have been even more appropriate.) Apparently the architect was one "Martin Gropius." "Gropius" is not a common name, and some professions run in families: could Martin be related to Walter, who's responsible for the Pan Am building? How depressing.
—> Apparently Martin was Walter's great-uncle. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gropius has a picture of the old Gewandhaus (with the University Library on the right).
I've looked at rental prices in Leipzig, and no apartment is as expensive as my measly two rooms in Brooklyn. No price was listed for one five bedroom apartment with a dining room and two balconies; maybe that could compare. And these buildings are nothing to sniff at; they're as fine as anything on Riverside Drive, but smaller — 6 or 7 stories instead of 10 or 15; their façades have more detail; and they often come with bay windows, turrets, even caryatids, as well as access to a garden, or at least a view of one.