Spa & GolfResort Weimarer Land – two Michelin stars on the fairway

Forty-five holes of golf fan out from the drive of Spa & GolfResort Weimarer Land, a resort estate on the edge of Blankenhain, a Thuringian town some 14 kilometres south of Weimar that has traded on its lime trees since it was first documented in 1252. Behind the courtyard façade sit two kitchens with Michelin stars to their name, a 3,000-square-metre spa with three heated pools, and nearly a hundred rooms and suites named, somewhat playfully, after the family of golfer Bobby Jones and the architects of Augusta National. The MICHELIN Guide gives the house Two Keys, placing it among its most accomplished stays in eastern Germany, a distinction that reflects as much the scale of the estate — stretched across its own 18-hole Goethe and Feininger courses plus a 9-hole layout — as the quality of its two starred dining rooms, Masters and The First.

01The house

Blankenhain has been known for its lindens since the town's first charter in 1252, and the resort takes its cue from that rural, planted landscape rather than from grandeur.

The estate is organised around a former farm courtyard — several room categories still look onto this "historic courtyard" — with newer wings arranged along the fairways of the Goethe Course. The result is less a single historic house than a village of linked buildings: hotel wings, golf clubhouse, spa pavilion and a scattering of restaurants, stitched together by lime-tree avenues and the ponds that also feed the Königin Luise 9-hole course, built between August 2020 and July 2022 from three older holes and six new short ones.

02Rooms and suites

The hotel counts close to a hundred rooms and suites across eight categories, from 27 m² Comfort Class doubles to a two-storey, 121 m² Atlanta I family suite with three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Beds throughout are box-spring models by TRECA Paris, and every category from Junior Suite upward comes with its own Nespresso machine and tea station.

Insider tip

14 km south of Weimar; Bad Berka 5 km, Schloss Belvedere 9 km away.

The naming is a private joke for golfers: the Junior Suites Robert Tyre, Robert Junior, MacKenzie and Alister honour Bobby Jones's father, son, and the two names — Alister MacKenzie — of the Scottish architect who co-designed Augusta National, while the Golden Bell superior room borrows its name from Augusta's famous 12th hole. The 56 m² Wellness Suites Birdie, Albatross and Eagle go further still, each with a private sauna and a freestanding bathtub set into the room overlooking the courtyard, and the family suites Georgia and Atlanta recall Bobby Jones's birthplace and home state.

03Where to eat

Restaurant Masters seats a maximum of sixteen guests, one of the smallest Michelin-starred dining rooms in Germany. Chef Danny Schwabe took charge of the kitchen in 2020 and built towards the star the team won in April 2023 at a ceremony in Karlsruhe, confirmed again the following year; his cooking is described on the house's own menu as a Francophile, Mediterranean-leaning cuisine built on regional produce. Host Roman Drobecks trained as a cook and hotelier in the early 1990s and spent seventeen formative years at Weimar's Hotel Elephant, where he discovered his passion for wine and, alongside chef Marcello Fabbri, helped bring Thuringia its first Michelin star.

That same Marcello Fabbri now runs The First, the resort's Italian-leaning sister restaurant, where he has been head chef since 2023; a star followed within the year, in March 2024. Fabbri made Thuringian culinary history in 2003 when his kitchen at the Hotel Elephant's Anna Amalia restaurant became the region's first to be starred, and at The First he serves a five-course, frequently changing tasting menu built on Italian produce and his own vegetable garden, with wine pairings chosen by sommelier Thomas Stobbe.

Beyond the two fine-dining rooms, the resort runs a rustic GolfHütte for seasonal, clubhouse-style food, the lighter KornKammer, a bar with its own lounge area, and the separately run Thuringian restaurant Zum gülden Zopf in the town itself — seven kitchens in all under one ownership.

04Spa and wellbeing

The LindenSpa occupies some 3,000 m², with an indoor infinity pool, an outdoor infinity pool and a whirlpool kept at between 28 and 34°C, plus a cold-plunge basin and a 12°C Kneipp pool for contrast bathing. Six saunas — a panoramic sauna looking over the golf course, a salt sauna, an earth-wall sauna, an infrared cabin, a "Lindt flower bath" and an aroma steam bath — sit alongside six separate rest areas, including a waterbed room and a saline-air lounge.

Treatments are run from seven individual cabins, including a double room for couples' massages, with a programme that runs from classic and sports massages to facials and body wraps. A weekly schedule of yoga, Pilates and personal training rounds out the fitness side for guests who would rather work up a sweat than melt into one.

05The neighbourhood

Blankenhain sits 14 kilometres south of Weimar, in the gently rolling district that gives the resort its name, Weimarer Land. The town's lime trees — still visible along the Weimarer Straße that runs past the hotel's postal address — have been its emblem since the Middle Ages, and the wooded hills around Bad Berka, five kilometres away, and the ducal Schloss Belvedere, nine kilometres off, make an easy pairing with Goethe's own Weimar for a day away from the fairways.

06Making the most of a stay

The resort packages its two stars into short breaks — a one-night arrangement pairs breakfast and a welcome glass of sparkling wine with Danny Schwabe's five-course menu at Masters, and a parallel package does the same with Marcello Fabbri's Italian menu at The First. Golfers can combine green fees across the Goethe, Feininger and Bobby Jones Champion courses with spa vouchers or dinner menus in the resort's multi-night packages.

Families are steered towards the RabbitClub, a supervised playhouse-and-outdoors programme that runs seasonal themes so parents can play a round or book a treatment without a babysitter to arrange. Before leaving, the Mary Malone Home Style Shop sells the cushions, scents and small objects used around the hotel, while golfers can outfit themselves properly at the Pro Shop in the Golf Hut.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.