The Venue

The 3rd ICCI will take place in the Natural Sciences Collections ZNS in the centre of Halle (Saale).

More than 1200 years old, Halle (Saale) is today a lively academic city in the south of Saxony-Anhalt in Germany. Beautifully located on the River Saale and with some 7,000 hectares of water and green spaces, the city is also a leisure and sporting magnet. With more than 241,000 inhabitants, Halle is one of the two largest cities of the state Saxony-Anhalt. Together with Leipzig, which is located 38 kilometres to the southeast, the city forms the urban economic metropolitan area of central Germany, where more than one million people live. Halle is a major transportation hub and important economic center.

The Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg is the largest university in Saxony-Anhalt and one of the oldest universities in Germany. In addition, the city is the seat of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Federal Cultural Foundation, which for the Federal Republic of Germany have the tasks of international representation of national science and German culture. In the city there are a variety of cultural and museum facilities, such as the Moritzburg Foundation or the State Museum of Prehistory (exhibiting the famous Himmelsscheibe / Sky Disc).

The Natural Sciences Collections (ZNS) unite selected natural history collections of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg under one roof. Unique in Europe, many millions of objects have been collected, scientifically processed and deposited over a period of more than 230 years. They are an archive of nature and an irreplaceable witness to the biodiversity of our planet. The repository building on Domplatz 4 was built in 1839 and houses the Central Natural Science Collections. It already includes the Zoological Collection with a special exhibition and teaching repository. Several other important collections are housed nearby, including the Geiseltal-Collection.