Erfurt is the capital and largest city of the Central German state of Thuringia, with a population of around 216,000. It lies in the wide vall…Erfurt is the capital and largest city of the Central German state of Thuringia, with a population of around 216,000. It lies in the wide valley of the River Gera, in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest, and in the middle of a line of the six largest Thuringian cities, stretching from Eisenach in the west, via Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar and Jena, to Gera in the east. Together with Kassel and Göttingen, it is one of the cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants lying closest to the geographic centre of Germany. Erfurt is 100 km south-west of Leipzig, 250 km north-east of Frankfurt, 300 km south-west of Berlin and 400 km north of Munich.