Where to Stay in Hannover, Lower Saxony

What is Hannover known for?

Hannover is the capital of Lower Saxony and Germany's trade-fair city, with exhibition halls built out for the Expo of 2000. Trade shows fill it. The baroque parterres at Herrenhausen, the modern collection of the Sprengel Museum and the burnt shell of the Aegidienkirche give the other Hannover, and the Sculpture Mile carries art along the road into the middle of town.

What are the main landmarks in Hannover?

Hannover's landmarks ring a rebuilt old town. The Market Church raises its brick tower over the middle, and the Aegidienkirche stands roofless a few streets away as a war memorial. Leibniz lies in the Neustädter Hof- und Stadtkirche.

Art comes next: the Sprengel Museum, the Landesmuseum Hannover, the August Kestner Museum and the Wilhelm Busch Museum sit along the water and the Sculpture Mile, while the Döhrener Turm survives to the south from the outer works of the medieval town.

What is the history of Hannover?

Hannover began at a crossing of the Leine. A market village on the high bank grew into a walled town under the Welf dukes, and Burg Lauenrode guarded the river until the townsmen pulled it down. The dukes then made it a residence.

Their gardeners laid out the great parterre at Herrenhausen in the Dutch manner, and their librarian, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, served the house for forty years and was buried in the Neustädter Hof- und Stadtkirche. In 1714 the elector George Ludwig left for London as George I, and for more than a century one family ruled here and in Britain. The kingdom that followed lost its independence to Prussia in 1866.

Bombing gutted the old town in the last war. The burnt Aegidienkirche was left exactly as the fire had made it, the one ruin the rebuilders refused to finish, while the surviving timber houses were gathered into a single restored row near the Market Church. Trade did the rebuilding.

Fair halls went up on the ground south-east of the city, the Expo of 2000 added a district and a fast railway, and Hannover has kept its calendar of exhibitions since.

Where is Hannover?

Hannover stands on the Leine where the north German plain runs flat toward the sea. The Ihme joins the river at the western edge of the centre, the Maschsee lies dug into the meadows to the south, and the Eilenriede covers the eastern side as a forest inside the built-up city. Ground here barely rises.

The Harz lifts well away to the south-east, and the country between is farmland, heath and pine.

What is the climate of Hannover?

Hannover takes its weather off the North Sea. Damp Atlantic air crosses the plain with nothing to slow it, so winters arrive grey and wet far more often than frozen, and summers stay moderate until thunder builds over the Harz. Snow rarely holds.

The Eilenriede turns the eastern side of the city yellow and brown before the first autumn gales strip it bare.

How do you get to Hannover?

Hannover Hauptbahnhof stands in the middle of the city on the fast line between Berlin and the Ruhr. Trains from Hamburg, Bremen and Frankfurt call there, and the S-Bahn runs out to the fair halls at Laatzen and to the airport at Langenhagen. The tram network fills the gaps.

Motorways ring the built-up area on three sides, and the Mittellandkanal carries barge freight past the northern edge on its way between the Rhine and the Elbe.