The pottery town of Bürgel, with its church tower visible from afar, blends into the hilly landscape to the east of the middle Saale valley near Jena. The former fortification, the Burgelin on the nearby Georgsberg, gave the town its name. It owes its nickname "pottery town" to the very craft that has shaped the life of the town for more than three centuries. The history of the town is closely linked to the Benedictine monastery founded in 1133. It is assumed that the granting of the town charter was at the instigation of the abbot of the monastery. Bürgel was already mentioned as a town in a document in 1234. By the middle of the 13th century, the north-south and east-west trade routes crossed here and helped the merchant settlement to flourish.