Germany Guide
Lower Saxony
Hannover (Hanover)
"Is Hannover the most boring city in Germany?" news weekly Der Spiegel once asked. In a word, no, though the capital of Lower Saxony can appear every bit a faceless modern metropolis. When five of the world's ten largest trade fairs roll into town, up to 800,000 businesspeople wheel, deal, then disappear, the majority probably unaware that they had been in a state capital which, from 1815 to 1866, ruled a kingdom in its own right. Eighty eight air raids reduced the city from elegant aristocrat to war-torn widow and, with ninety percent of the centre reduced to rubble, the city patched up where possible but largely wiped clean the slate.
It was some past to write off, too. The seventeenth-century dukes of Calenburg turned the head of the former Hanseatic League member when they took up summer residence at nearby village Höringehusen, and in 1679 Ernst August ushered in a golden age for his royal capital. Court academic Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz wowed Europe with his mathematical and philosophical theories and the arts blossomed, as did a Baroque garden seeded by the regent's wife Sophia, Hannover's prize, which ranks among the finest in Europe. More significantly for history, Sophia's parentage as granddaughter of James I of England saw her son, plain old Georg Ludwig, metamorphose into George I of Great Britain in 1714 to begin the house of Hannover's 120-year stint on the British throne.
Even if the city's EXPO2000 exhibition turned out to be something of a damp squib, that it happened at all sums up a vigorous, ambitious city. It's a place with the bottle to reinvent itself through street art, from the Nanas at Hohen Ufer to the wacky bus- and tramstops commissioned to cheer up drab streets before EXPO. Similarly, there are some vibrant art museums and a grungy bar and nightlife scene that is anything but boring. What it lacks is a landmark. Wartime destruction, then postwar planning, conspired to erase the coherence of Hannover's Altstadt. North of the pocket that has been rebuilt stretch broad avenues of high-street shopping, south across the arterial ring-road lie the Maschsee lake and the best art galleries. The celebrated gardens are northwest of the centre, beyond the lively nightlife district centred around the Steintor.
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