Gotha

Gotha, a town of Germany, alternately with Coburg the capital of the duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, stands 31 miles W. by S. of Weimar, on the northern outskirts of the Thuringian Forest, and is a handsome, well-built town, with fine parks. The principal public building is the castle of Friedenstein, built in 1648 on the site of a former one, on a rock 78 feet above the town; it contains a library of 200,000 volumes and 6000 MSS., and a very valuable numismatic collection. The new museum (1878), in the Renaissance style, now harbours the picture-gallery, in which Cranach, Van Eyck, Holbein, Rubens, and Rembrandt are represented; a very excellent cabinet of engravings; a natural history collection; collections of Egyptian, Roman, Greek, and German antiquities; and a Japanese and Chinese museum. A new observatory was built in 1874. Gotha is an active industrial town, the principal manufactures being shoes, fire-engine pipes, sugar, and toys. Gotha sausages have a widespread celebrity. Several hundreds of designers, engravers, printers, and colourers of maps are employed here in the large geographical establishment of Justus Perthes (q.v.), who also publishes the Almanach (q.v.) de Gotha. Pop. (1875) 22,928; (1890) 29,134. See Beck, Geschichte der Stadt Gotha (1870).