The same folks that were calling Berlin the new Barcelona are now calling Leipzig, the new Berlin. Leipzig or “Hypezig,” as some are calling it, may be Europe’s hippest city at the moment, with up and coming artists from around Europe gravitating to the vast gallery quarter of former silk mills known as Spinnerel.

Leipzig will be looking backwards in 2014 in a year-long commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the “Peaceful Revolution” that led to the unification of Germany.

Leipzig’s Runde Ecke (Round Corner) building looks harmless enough, but looks can be deceiving. The building now houses the Stasi Museum, which tells the brutal story of the 40 years of institutional terror that the East German Stasi Police wrought on the citizens of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

Throughout 2014, Germans will take the time to reconsider the GDR and the dramatic events of 1989.

Though the fall of the Berlin Wall has become the popular icon of German Unification, the catalyst of those events began in 1982 when the people of Leipzig began weekly meetings on Monday nights in front of St. Nicholas Church for the “Prayers for Peace.”

Small gatherings at first grew incrementally until the October of 1989 when crowds swelled to 70,000 on Oct. 9 and then 150,000 o Oct. 16 and on the third consecutive Monday of Oct. 23 the crowds reached 300,000.

Peaceful throughout, the meetings are remembered for their quiet dignity and the tradition of crowd members holding candles. Today there are lights imbedded in the cobble stones of AlexanderPlatz outside of St. Nicholas to commemorate the event.

Leipzig’s annual Festival of Lights begins annually on Oct. 9 This year’s festival, fueled by the anniversary, will be especially grand with large-scale projections and theatrical installations to mark significant places on the Innenring, the route of the 1989 demonstrations.

With light, audio and video displays, international artists will create a variety of alternating perspectives with contemporary references.

A less peaceful element in Leipzig can be found at the Battle of Nations Monument, which remembers one of the bloodiest and most significant battles in history. From Oct. 16 to 18, 1813 about 120,000 people died in an around Leipzig as Napoleon suffered his first defeat. The monument was built in 1913 to commemorate the centennial of the battle just as Europe was preparing to launch WW1.

In the meantime, the German National Tourism Board’s overarching theme of culture and UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2014 will also shine brightly in Leipzig even though Leipzig sports no UNESCO sites. Leipzig’s cultural and historic legacy compares to any city in Germany. Its classical musical legacy is unsurpassed by any other city: Mahler, Mendelssohn, Bach, Schumann and Wagner all have roots in Leipzig.

Johan Bach was the headmaster of the St Thomas' Boys Choir for 27 years. Opened in 1409, the University of Leipzig is an alma mater to Goethe, Nietzsche and Richard Wagner, as well as the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. In medieval times, Leipzig’s signature court yards hosted Europe’s first trade fairs.

The Leipzig School is a major branch of modern painting. In 2012, Leipzig set a personal best growing 13.4 percent to almost 2.5 million overnight stays. Leipzig is also where the European trade show was invented in the city’s signature “Passage Court Yards.”