Lübeck

A Slavic settlement called Liubice stood at the meeting of the Schwartau and the Trave before 819, and by the 10th century it was one of the main places of the Obotrites. In 1143 Adolf II, Count of Holstein, founded a new town on the river island of Bucu; after a fire in 1157 Henry the Lion took over the site in 1159 and rebuilt it, and in 1160 it received town rights. In 1226 Emperor Frederick II made it a Free Imperial City, subject to no one but the emperor.

From the middle of the 12th century Lübeck grew into the cradle of the Hanseatic League, the trading network of German merchant towns, and became its leading city and de facto capital: the league's assemblies met here regularly from the middle of the 14th century. Salt from Lüneburg, stored in the Salzspeicher, went out to the Baltic ports, and the merchants' wealth paid for St Mary's and the brick churches whose seven towers still mark the skyline. Decline came slowly as European trade turned to the Atlantic and the Thirty Years' War broke the league's cooperation, though the city remained an important Baltic port in the 19th century.

Lübeck stayed an independent state until 1 April 1937, when the Greater Hamburg Act merged it into Prussian Schleswig-Holstein. On 28 March 1942 an RAF raid caused a firestorm in the old town. After the war refugees from the east swelled the population, and during the Cold War it was the only large West German city directly on the inner German border, which cut it off from its eastern hinterland. In 1987 UNESCO listed the old town as a World Heritage Site; reunification in 1990 brought new residents from the former East.

Lübeck calls itself the City of the Seven Towers, after the spires of its five main Protestant churches, and its identity rests on the Hanseatic past — the city still uses the title Hansestadt. Music has deep roots here: the organist Franz Tunder began the tradition of evening concerts in St Mary's, and Dieterich Buxtehude, who succeeded him in 1668, made those Abendmusiken famous. The Lübeck Academy of Music keeps the tradition of serious music alive in the old town.

The city is also a literary one. Thomas Mann came from a family of Lübeck merchants, and his 1901 novel Buddenbrooks made the manners of its 19th-century merchant class familiar to readers around the world; the Buddenbrookhaus is devoted to him and his family. Günter Grass lived just outside the city from 1995 until his death, and Willy Brandt is remembered at the Willy-Brandt-Haus. One of the Salzspeicher served as the vampire's house in Murnau's film Nosferatu.

The local speech belongs to the Holsatian dialect of Low German. Each November the Nordic Film Days, held since 1956, bring films from the Nordic and Baltic countries, and in July the sailing crowds gather for Travemünde Week. December is the city's other great season, when Christmas markets fill the market square, the Koberg and the halls of the Hospital of the Holy Spirit and visitors arrive for marzipan.

About 223,000 people lived in Lübeck at the end of 2025, making it the second-largest city in Schleswig-Holstein after Kiel, and it belongs to the wider metropolitan region of Hamburg. Most of them live in the boroughs that spread around the old town island, from St. Jürgen and St. Lorenz to Kücknitz and Travemünde on the coast.

The port is the second-largest German port on the Baltic after Rostock, and the Skandinavienkai at Travemünde is Germany's most important ferry port, with sailings to Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. The University of Lübeck with its medical centre, the Technical University of Applied Sciences and the Academy of Music bring students and researchers, and tourism — to the old town and to the resorts along Lübeck Bay — is an important part of the economy. Marzipan making continues on an industrial scale.

Summer weekends pull residents to the beach at Travemünde and the resorts beyond it, and to boats on the Wakenitz; in winter life turns inward to cafés, Kneipen and, in December, the markets.

Lübeck is best known for marzipan. A local legend says it was invented here when a siege or famine left nothing but stored almonds and sugar, though others place its origin in Persia centuries earlier. What is certain is that Lübeck, as the Hanseatic trading hub, had a steady supply of imported almonds, and by the 18th century its marzipan was known for a high almond content. Lübeck Marzipan has been a protected geographical indication since 1996 and may contain no more than 30 per cent sugar; the fine grade, no more than 10 per cent.

Niederegger, founded in 1806, is the best-known maker. Its café and shop on Breite Straße draw visitors all year, especially at Christmas, and a small museum upstairs shows historical wooden moulds and figures sculpted from marzipan. Carstens and other makers also produce it in the city.

The other local speciality is Rotspon, a red wine whose grapes are processed and fermented in France and then shipped in wooden barrels to Lübeck, where it is aged and bottled — a trade dating back to Hanseatic times, and the wine is sold in nearly every shop. For a meal with history, the Schiffergesellschaft at the Koberg serves dinner under ship models hanging from the ceiling of the captains' guildhall of 1535. Fish rolls are the cheap meal of the northern coast, and the old town is dense with cafés and Kneipen.