In Gotha Lucas Cranach the Elder fell in love: Here he met Barbara Brengebier, the daughter of a Gotha councilman. The marriage took place around 1512 probably in Gotha. To this very day the building of the Brengebiers at the main market, in which later Cranach’s daughter Ursula lived with her husband, is called Cranach Haus. Her sister Barbara also had lived in Gotha since 1555.

She married Christian Brück, the chancellor of the Saxon Elector Johann Friedrich I. He was dismembered in the course of the Grumbach Handel on 18 April 1567 at the main market, where a board embedded in the pavement recalls the date.

In the museums in Friedenstein Castle numerous important paintings and an extensive existence of graphic art by the Cranach painter family, which the dukes of Saxony-Gotha brought back from old Ernestinian ownership to Gotha.