Hanover

Baroque garden of the House of Hanover, where a big fountain shoots high between clipped hedges. One corner holds a grotto Niki de Saint Phalle lined with mirror and coloured glass. Some summer Saturday nights host an international fireworks contest.

Built in 1913, its dome is climbed by a lift that runs on a slant, curving up inside the dome to the viewing deck. The cabin floor stays level all the way. Four lobby models show Hanover in different eras, so you can compare it before and after the bombing.

A lake dug by hand in the 1930s, a walk from the south edge of the centre. The loop around it is about 6 kilometres, popular with joggers, and boats are for hire. For a few weeks each summer a festival lines the shore with food stalls.

A red stripe on the pavement runs 4.2 kilometres and links 36 sights in turn. The tourist office sells a small booklet with numbered notes, and the line starts outside the central station and loops back to it. Walk it without a map and you will not get lost.

Three bright, full-bodied women by Niki de Saint Phalle have stood on the Leine embankment since 1974. Fiercely opposed at first, they are now a city emblem, and the artist later became an honorary citizen. A flea market fills the bank by them on Saturdays.

Bombing in 1943 took the roof off this church, and it was left unrebuilt as a war memorial. A peace bell sent from Hiroshima hangs under the tower and is rung each August 6 in the morning. The roofless interior is open at any hour.

The city forest east of the centre covers nearly twice the area of Central Park in New York. Cycle tracks and bridle paths run through it separately, so read the sign at every fork before heading in. The zoo sits on its edge.

The zoo is set out as landscapes by continent, and the Canadian coast section has a full-size cargo ship moored at the shore. The African section is seen from a boat that runs down a river past the animals. Arrive early and the queue for the boat is short.

West of Hanover is the largest lake in north-west Germany, mostly only a little over a metre deep. In the middle is Wilhelmstein, an island fort an 18th-century count built up from stone, with boats running from the Steinhude jetty.

A rose said to be a thousand years old climbs the outer apse wall of Hildesheim Cathedral to the south. Bombing burned the cathedral in 1945, but the roots lived and sprouted again. Cathedral and St Michael's are World Heritage; the rose flowers in late May.

A 20th-century art museum on the Maschsee's north shore. Niki de Saint Phalle gave it several hundred works in 2000, which fill rooms of their own. Hanover-born Kurt Schwitters is well represented, and you can step into a rebuilt version of his Merzbau.

A 14th-century Gothic church in red brick whose tower, close to 100 metres, shows above the whole old town. Bombs left it a shell; postwar builders restored it. A few half-timbered houses survive behind it on Kramerstrasse and Burgstrasse, an easy loop.

A museum of caricature and drawing in a small palace in the Georgengarten, on the way to Herrenhausen. Wilhelm Busch, the local author of Max and Moritz and a forefather of German comics, is the core of the collection. It fits into a walk through the park.

Billed as the largest marksmen's festival in the world, ten days each early July. On the second Sunday, rifle clubs and bands march in a procession about 12 kilometres long. In the beer tents, people drink two glasses held in one hand.

A Weser river town about 45 minutes by train, scene of the Pied Piper legend. On summer Sundays at noon the story is played free outside the Wedding House. In the lane where the children are said to have vanished, music and dancing are still banned.

An old imperial town where the Harz hills begin, slightly more than sixty minutes by rail. Its 11th-century imperial palace and the Rammelsberg mine, worked for over a millennium, are World Heritage with the old town. Mine tunnels are guided; bring a layer.