Northern Germany
Gothic and Renaissance turrets, Slavic onion domes, Ottoman features and terracotta Hanseatic step gables are among the mishmash of architectural styles…
Must-see attractions in Northern Germany
St Pauli & Reeperbahn
Here's the perfect excuse to stay up all Saturday night. Every Sunday in the wee hours, some 70,000 locals and visitors descend upon the famous Fischmarkt…
Rostock
Central Rostock’s pride and joy is the 13th-century Marienkirche, the only main Rostock church to survive WWII unscathed (although restorations are…
Hamburg
Welcome to one of the most Europe's most exciting recent architectural creations. A squat brown-brick former warehouse at the far west of HafenCity was…
Lübeck
Built in 1464 and looking so settled-in that it appears to sag, Lübeck’s charming red-brick city gate is a national icon. Its twin pointed cylindrical…
Lübeck
Opened in 2015, this brilliant museum tells the remarkable story of the Hanseatic League, Lübeck and the region. For 600 years, city states in northern…
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Lübeck
This museum quarter includes an old synagogue, church and medieval buildings along its uneven streets. The namesake St Annen Museum details the diverse…
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Northern Germany
Revel in the Flemish masterpieces collected by the Mecklenburg dukes during the 17th and 18th centuries at this impressive museum with wide-ranging…
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Northern Germany
Such was the allure of this palace that when the ducal seat moved 36km north to Schwerin in 1837, some family members continued living here until 1945…
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Northern Germany
The medieval Rathaus has a spectacular baroque facade, added in 1720 and decorated with coats of arms and three tiers of statues. The top row represents …
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Hamburg
‘Der Michel’, as it is affectionately called, is one of Hamburg’s most recognisable landmarks and northern Germany’s largest Protestant baroque church…
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Northern Germany
The cobbled, slightly wobbly street and square Am Sande is full of red-brick buildings with typically Hanseatic stepped gables. Even among these striking…
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Northern Germany
Güstrow's fabulous Renaissance 16th-century Schloss is home to a historical museum as well as a cultural centre, period art exhibitions and occasional…
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Rügen Island
Northwest of Binz, in a lovely Rügen forest, the extraordinary spiral Aussichtsturm Adlerhorst rises 30m above the forest floor – the spiral ramp goes…
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St Pauli & Reeperbahn
Wednesday late afternoon and evening is a terrific time to be in St Pauli when the weekly night market takes over Spielbudenplatz with food stalls, live…
Hamburg
Even the worst cynics are quickly transformed into fans of this vast miniature world that goes on and on. The model trains wending their way through the…
Hamburg
Sort of a bookend for New York's Ellis Island, Hamburg's excellent emigration museum looks at the conditions that drove about 5 million people to leave…
Hamburg
Thrill to some of Hamburg's best harbour views from this accurately named and quite pretty park.
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Rügen Island
Macht Urlaub (Power Vacation) is a well-done exhibition on the Nazis and the role the workers' resort Prora played in their 'strength through joy' schemes…
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Northern Germany
In the 1938, the Nazis converted an old brick factory 25km southeast of Hamburg into a concentration camp. Over the next seven years, countless numbers of…
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Northern Germany
Besides the Rathaus, notable buildings around the large Markt include the Court of Justice, the little gated-in, grotto-like area with paintings depicting…
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Lübeck
Thomas Mann, winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize for Literature, was born in Lübeck in 1875, and his family’s former home is now the Buddenbrookhaus. Named…
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Lübeck
Born in Danzig (now Gdańsk), Poland, Günter Grass had been living just outside Lübeck for 13 years when he collected his Nobel Prize in 1999. But this…
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Lübeck
Sometimes described as a ‘fairy tale in stone’, Lübeck’s 13th- to 15th-century Rathaus is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful in Germany. Inside,…
Internationales Maritimes Museum
Hamburg
Hamburg's maritime past – and future – is fully explored in this excellent private museum that sprawls over 10 floors of a revamped brick shipping…
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Northern Germany
Neubrandenburg was founded in 1248 by Herbord von Raven, a Mecklenburg knight granted the land by Brandenburg Margrave Johann I, and building progressed…
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Hamburg
During WWII, 20 Jewish children were chosen by Dr Josef Mengele at Auschwitz and sent to Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg for medical…
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Northern Germany
At the eastern edge of Am Sande stands the 14th-century St Johanniskirche, whose 108m-high spire leans 2.2m off centre. Local legend has it that the…
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Rügen Island
A grandiose hunting palace built in 1723 on top of the 107m-high Tempelberg, Jagdschloss Granitz was significantly enlarged and altered by Wilhelm Malte I…
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Lübeck
This fine Gothic church boasts the world's highest brick-vaulted roof and was the model for dozens of churches in northern Germany. Crane your neck to…
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St Pauli & Reeperbahn
Watching over the eastern gateway to St Pauli since 2011, the 'Dancing Towers' are a Hamburg icon. The two towers buck and weave by up to 3m from the…
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Kiel
The 99km-long Nord-Ostsee-Kanal reaches the Baltic Sea from the North Sea at Kiel, with some 60,000 ships passing through every year. It's easy to view…
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Northern Germany
This serene national park consists of bog and wetlands, and is home to a wide range of waterfowl, including ospreys, white-tailed eagles and cranes. Its…
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Rostock
Rostock’s large, somewhat bland central square is dominated by the splendid 13th-century Rathaus. The building’s baroque facade was added in 1727 after…
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Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte
St Pauli & Reeperbahn
Hamburg's history museum has lots of kid-friendly features: it's chock-full of intricate ship models, has a large model train set (which runs on the hour)…
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Northern Germany
Based on sketches he made in Russia, Ernst Barlach's squarish sculptures began bearing the same expressive gestures and hunched-over, wind-blown postures…
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Hamburg
The best views of the Elbe (nearly 3km wide here) and its container ships are from the 75m-high Süllberg hill. To get to Süllberg, take the S-Bahn to…
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Lübeck
The former Heiligen-Geist-Hospital has an elegant old entryway and a few resonances of Germany's first hospital (dating back to 1227). Through an early…
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Kiel
The splendid waterfront promenade known as the Kiellinie begins northeast of the Schlossgarten. Sailing clubs, a tiny aquarium, cafes and restaurants line…
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Rügen Island
The beach just north of Binz still bears testament to Nazi plans to create the world's largest resort: six hideous six-storey buildings, each 500m long,…
