Gohlis is now divided into three administrative localities (Gohlis-Süd, Gohlis-Mitte and Gohlis-Nord), all of which belong to the Stadtbezirk Nord of Leipzig.

It borders on the city core of Leipzig to the south-east, Eutritzsch to the east, Möckern to the west and Wiederitzsch to the north.

In 1659, Michael Heinrich Horn (1623–1681), a professor of medicine and chemistry at the Leipzig University, acquired the manor and the seigneury of Gohlis.

Christiana Regina Hetzer (1724–1780) and her second husband, the Leipzig merchant and alderman Johann Caspar Richter (1708–1770), built a summer residence in rococo style in 1755/1756.

After Richter's death, Christiana Regina remarried, making her third husband, the historian Johann Gottlob Böhme (1717–1780) lord of the manor.

At the invitation of Hetzer and his friend Christian Gottfried Körner, poet and playwright Friedrich Schiller spent the summer of 1785 in Gohlis.

[5][6] He worked on the second act of his play Don Carlos, edited the Fiesco and wrote the first version of the Ode to Joy.

The Royal Saxon Army developed an extensive barracks area between northern Gohlis and the neighbouring village Möckern.

[2] After the 1898 local plan, the built-up area was extended massively to the north, beyond the railway line that had been the settlement's northern border so far.

The next step of residential development was the Bauhaus-style Krochsiedlung (named after German-Jewish banker Hans Kroch) built in the far-north of Gohlis in 1929/30.

[2][9][10] Planned as a satellite city for 15,000 people, only a quarter of the project was completed before being halted by the ramifications of the Great Depression and finally abandoned after the Nazi seizure of power.

Under the communist rule in East Germany, residential development was complemented by 1960s blocks of housing cooperatives and a minor Plattenbau estate built at the northern end of Gohlis in the 1980s.

Highly frequented axes of motorized vehicles are Max-Liebermann-Strasse (part of the Bundesstraße 6), Georg-Schumann-Strasse, Platnerstrasse, Lindenthaler/Landsberger Strasse and Lützow-/Virchowstrasse.