Bremen

Bremen grew from an early medieval settlement on a dune beside the Weser and became the seat of a bishopric in 787. In the High Middle Ages it flourished as a trading town and joined the Hanseatic League in the 13th century, its merchants and guilds trading across the North Sea and the Baltic. To win and keep its independence the city had to contend first with the power of its archbishops and, after the Thirty Years' War, with Sweden, which ruled the surrounding duchy of Bremen-Verden. Its standing as a free city was recognised in 1720 by George I, Elector of Hanover and King of Great Britain.

In 1827 Bremen founded Bremerhaven as its seaport at the river mouth, and through its new docks it became the main port of embarkation for German and central European emigrants to the Americas. The Norddeutscher Lloyd, founded in the city in 1857, grew into one of the world's leading shipping lines, and the port became an entrepôt for Germany's late colonial trade. In the late 19th century Prussia drew Bremen into the German Empire.

After the First World War this liberal, social-democratic city was briefly a soviet republic, and under the Nazi regime it lost its autonomy. Bombing in the Second World War destroyed almost two-thirds of the city. Afterwards the old city-state was restored, together with Bremerhaven. In 2004 the town hall and the Roland were listed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Grimm brothers' tale of the Town Musicians of Bremen — the donkey, dog, cat and rooster who set off for the city and never arrive — has made Bremen known to children around the world, and Gerhard Marcks' bronze of the four animals stands beside the town hall. The Roland on the market square, erected in 1404, is the older emblem: a symbol of the civic freedom the city defended for centuries, and still a source of pride in a place that remains a city-state of its own.

The arts are concentrated along the Kulturmeile in the Viertel, with the Kunsthalle and the theatres of Theater Bremen, and on Böttcherstraße, where the museum of Paula Modersohn-Becker recalls the artists' colony at nearby Worpswede. In 2023 Bremen was named a UNESCO City of Literature. Each year the city also hosts young musicians from around the world in the International Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Football is followed closely: Werder Bremen, which won the league and cup double in 2004, plays at the Weserstadion on the river. The Freimarkt each October, held since the 11th century, is one of the oldest fairs in Germany and the biggest funfair in the north, and in summer the Breminale and the La Strada street-circus festival fill the riverbanks and squares.

About 580,000 people live in Bremen, one of Germany's ten or so largest cities and the second-largest in the north after Hamburg, and it is the centre of a metropolitan region of around 2.8 million that also includes Oldenburg and Bremerhaven. Migrant workers, drawn largely from Turkey and southern Europe, settled here permanently in the post-war decades, and more recent arrivals have slowed the ageing of the population.

The ports of Bremen and Bremerhaven together are the second-largest in Germany after Hamburg's. Airbus runs its second-largest German site here, equipping the wings of its widebody aircraft, and a Mercedes-Benz plant builds cars. Food and drink companies are a Bremen speciality: Beck's beer is brewed in the city, and coffee firms such as Jacobs, Melitta and Eduscho, along with the chocolatier Hachez, are based here. The University of Bremen and its marine research institutes add students and scientists.

The city is spread out — larger by area than Munich — and its rows of 19th-century Bremen houses, the town houses typical of the city, line inner districts such as the Viertel; trams and bicycles carry much of the daily traffic. Evenings out centre on the Schlachte and the Viertel, and in winter many groups set off on a Kohl-und-Pinkel walk, a hike followed by a meal of kale and sausage.

Bremen's best-known winter dish is Grünkohl mit Pinkel: kale stewed with pork belly and sausages, above all Pinkel, a smoked sausage of meat and grain eaten mainly around Bremen, Oldenburg and Osnabrück and in East Frisia. The tradition of the Kohl-und-Pinkel-Tour, or Grünkohlfahrt, joins a winter hike to a meal of kale and Pinkel with Schnaps. Knipp is another local sausage dish, made from oat groats, pork head, pork belly, rind, liver and broth, seasoned with salt, allspice and pepper.

Labskaus is the northern German port-city dish shared with Hamburg and Lübeck — salted meat or corned beef, potatoes and onion, sometimes with beetroot, pickled gherkin or herring mixed in or served alongside. Fish, from smoked eel to herring, appears on many menus, and the sweet to take home is Kluten, a traditional Bremen confection sold by the chocolatier Hachez near the town hall and in shops throughout the centre.

Several of Germany's coffee roasters are based in the city, and Beck's beer is brewed here. The Ratskeller beneath the town hall, a council wine cellar since 1405, keeps a famous collection of German wines, including some of the oldest in the country. For a casual meal, the cafés and beer gardens of the Schlachte and the small restaurants of the Viertel are where most people head.