In which city was the original Bauhaus school founded?

The original Bauhaus school was founded in Weimar, Germany.

Walter Gropius established the Staatliches Bauhaus on 1 April 1919. It emerged from the merger of the Grand Ducal Saxon Academy of Fine Art and the Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts, continuing earlier efforts to unite artistic training with craft production. The school’s guiding ambition was a Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total work of art,” bringing different creative disciplines together.

Weimar was only the first of three Bauhaus locations. Financial and political pressure forced the school to move to Dessau in 1925, where its famous modernist building was constructed. In 1932 it moved again, to Berlin, but the institution closed in 1933 under pressure from the Nazi regime.

Dessau is therefore a frequent wrong answer: it is strongly associated with Bauhaus architecture, especially Gropius’s 1926 school building, but it was not the birthplace. Berlin was the final location, not the original one. Weimar is the canonical answer to the founding-city question.