Things to do in Hannover

Nature · Running from the Zoo to the northern districts

640 hectares of forest inside the city — one of Europe's largest and oldest contiguous urban woodlands, with 80 km of paths.

Local tip: Enter at Emmichplatz or the Lister Turm and walk in for ten minutes; the traffic disappears entirely. The Lister Turm beer garden inside the woods is where locals actually go on a summer evening, and almost no visitor finds it.

Landmark · Herrenhausen, north-west

A baroque garden laid out from 1666 under Sophia of Hanover, with the Great Fountain, a grotto finished by Niki de Saint Phalle, and the reconstructed palace.

Local tip: The Großer Garten is ticketed; the Berggarten alongside it holds the orchid and tropical houses and is a separate, quieter experience. Go for the Fountain's timed displays or for the Kleines Fest in summer, when the garden fills with small performances across a single evening.

Neighborhood · West of the Leine

The city's most alive district — a former working-class quarter now full of bars, kiosks, small kitchens and the verb 'limmern'.

Local tip: The Limmerstraße is the whole thing. Buy a beer at a kiosk and drink it outside like everybody else; that is the local custom rather than a violation of one. Come on a Friday evening in summer and the street is effectively one long party.

Food · City centre, off the Karmarschstraße

A covered market hall from 1892, known locally as the belly of Hannover — fishmongers, cheesemongers, Portuguese and Turkish stalls, and long shared tables.

Local tip: Come at lunchtime on a weekday and eat standing up at a counter rather than sitting down in the centre's restaurants. It is where the city eats, it is cheap, and the fish counters at the north end are the best in Lower Saxony outside the coast.

Culture · On the Maschsee

One of Germany's most important 20th-century collections — Kurt Schwitters, whose Merz work was made in this city, plus Picasso, Klee and a major photography holding.

Local tip: The Schwitters rooms are the reason to come: he built the original Merzbau here and it was destroyed in the war, so the reconstruction and the surviving work are as close as the city gets to its own lost avant-garde. Then walk out onto the Maschsee, which starts at the door.

Landmark · Trammplatz, city centre

A 1913 town hall with a lift that travels up the inside of the dome on a curve rather than a straight line — believed to be the only one of its kind in Europe.

Local tip: It costs a few euros, the queue moves, and the view from the top takes in the Maschsee, the Eilenriede and the whole layout of the city in one go. Downstairs, four city models in the entrance hall show Hannover in 1689, 1939, 1945 and today — the 1945 one explains almost everything about how this city looks now.