3 Best Sights in Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein and the Baltic Coast

Proof of Lübeck's former position as the golden queen of the Hanseatic League is found at every step in the Altstadt, which contains more 13th- to 15th-century buildings than all other large northern German cities combined. This fact has earned the Altstadt a place on UNESCO's register of the world's greatest cultural and natural treasures.

Construction of this, the city's oldest building, began in 1173. Its founder, Heinrich der Löwe himself, laid the foundation stone. The cathedral was initially built as a Romanesque brick building, which was completed in 1230, but starting in 1266 its reconstruction to a Gothic hall church began. The building, which was repeatedly altered, was severely damaged in an air raid in 1942. It was not until 1982 that the reconstruction was completed. The richly decorated church houses, among other things, a triumphal cross by the Lübeck artist Bernt Notke and the Renaissance pulpit, which is decorated with seven alabaster reliefs.