📍Große Nikolaistraße 5, 06108 Halle (Saale), Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
1685 – 1703“I was born Georg Friedrich Händel on the 23rd of February 1685 in Halle, a prosperous Saxon city on the Saale River. My father was a court barber-surgeon who initially opposed my musical ambitions, preferring a legal career. The Halle of my childhood had a rich musical culture — the Marktkirche and its organist Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, who became my teacher, gave me the foundation in counterpoint and composition that served me for sixty years. I left Halle at eighteen for Hamburg and then Italy, and eventually settled in London, where I spent the last forty-seven years of my life. I became George Frideric Handel, an Englishman by naturalisation if not by birth. The Halle childhood formed the musician; London gave him a world stage.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today
Sources: Burrows, D. Handel (1994), Oxford University Press; Deutsch, O. Handel: A Documentary Biography (1955), Norton