Lubeck

A city gate finished in 1478, its two towers leaning toward each other as they sank into soft ground. On the town side a Latin inscription wishes for concord within and peace without. Old salt warehouses, leaning too, line the river beside it.

No brick church has a higher vault, and it set the pattern for brick Gothic across northern Europe. Bells that crashed down in the 1942 bombing lie where they fell. By the outside entrance sits a devil who, legend says, helped build it, taking it for a tavern.

Close to 90 yards behind the street houses still hold little cottages, reached through low passages tunnelled under the front buildings. Many are open by day, but people live there, so pass quietly. Fuchtingshof is a courtyard full of flowers.

A museum of the Hanseatic League opened in 2015, with life-size sets such as the Novgorod trading post and the Bruges market. On entry you pick one Hanseatic trader whose life unfolds room by room. An old friary forms part of the museum.

Its 13th-century founding makes it one of the oldest welfare institutions in Europe. Inside the long sick hall stand rows of small wooden cubicles built in 1820, each once home to an elderly resident. In December the hall hosts a Christmas craft market.

A resort where the Trave meets the Baltic north of Lubeck, roughly thirty minutes away by train. Across the river at Priwall the four-masted barque Passat, built in 1911, lies moored as a museum, while big ferries for Scandinavia sail just off the sand.

No longer a parish church, it is used for exhibitions and events, and a lift rises to a viewing platform 50 metres up the tower. There are no stairs to climb, and up there it is plain at a glance that the old town is an island ringed by water.

A museum for the Nobel-winning writer Gunter Grass, who left many drawings and sculptures as well as books. Prints and bronzes he made himself hang beside his manuscripts, and more sculptures stand in the courtyard garden.

A medieval town hall built of glazed bricks that shine black. Big round holes pierce the decorative screen walls on top, there to let the wind through so the walls do not blow over. The marzipan house Niederegger stands opposite.

Henry the Lion laid its foundations in 1173, and it stands apart at the island's southern end, so it is quiet. A huge triumphal cross carved by Bernt Notke hangs over the nave. The park path by the pond behind it makes a pleasant stroll.

A 14th-century brick church long called the church of sailors and fishermen. In a side chapel lies a lifeboat from the Pamir, the sailing ship lost in an Atlantic storm in 1957, as a memorial. Two historic organs survive, so concerts are frequent.

A museum on the life of Willy Brandt, the West German chancellor born in Lubeck in 1913, set in an old merchant house on Konigstrasse. Film follows his kneeling in Warsaw and his eastern policy. Admission costs nothing.

A 15th-century gate that once guarded the island old town's north side, one of only two left with the Holstentor. Unlike its crowded twin, it is quiet, and cars and bikes simply pass beneath. The European Hansemuseum stands beside it on the old friary site.

Housed in an early 16th-century Augustinian convent, it gathers medieval church altars. Its prize is the Passion altarpiece Hans Memling painted in 1491. The cloister garth stays calm even on busy days.

A river running from Lake Ratzeburg into Lubeck, its banks so overgrown it is called the Amazon of the North. During the Cold War the inner German border followed its eastern bank, leaving it little touched. Boats and canoes head upstream from town.

A little town filling a lake island south of Lubeck, tied to shore by three causeways. Henry the Lion founded the Romanesque brick cathedral on its north point in the 12th century. Lakeside trails loop around, and you can hire a rowing boat.