The backstory doesn’t look encouraging. A river port city, former stronghold of the Hanseatic League, whose shipbuilding and aircraft industry in World War II made it a priority target for Allied bombs. A city that hosted a Stasi (secret police) headquarters in GDR days and which suffers from depopulation today, following the exodus of 60,000 people after the Wall came down. But despite all that, Rostock is a cheerful surprise.

It’s a cobbled, eminently walkable place that still has a large part of its ancient city wall. It is connected to a seaside resort – Warnemunde – with a frequent, easy-use train connection. And its massive brick cathedral St Mary’s, which was started back in the 13th century, has two astonishing features.

After the devastation of World War II, the GDR rebuilt much of the city centre, some of it in uncompromisingly socialist style, particularly along the showpiece boulevard Lange Strasse. But along the parallel main pedestrianised shopping street, Kröpeliner Strasse, restoration was done sensitively, respecting bits of medieval brick gothic, baroque and more recent neo-Renaissance facades, particularly of the university building on Universitätsplatz.

The GDR also added a lot of statues and fountains, including what locals call the ‘porno fountain’ (official name the ‘fountain of joy’) also on Universitätsplatz, which along with Neuer Markt is the focus of city life. The fountain is an exuberant collection of figures, both human and animal, in various vigorous poses, including a wild boar doing situps. Its humans are naked, which inspired the nickname, but then so are huge numbers of naked statues all around the world, so to pick on this one seems a bit unnecessary. Particularly as it is a very popular cooling off spot for children during the summer months.

Street cafes here often play host to different nationalities. Rostock has ferry services to Denmark and Sweden, and Warnemunde also has a cruiseship port, so you’re likely to hear lots of different languages in town.

At the eastern end of Kröpeliner Strasse is Neuer Markt, still open on one side after the damage of World War II. The square is the location for the Rathaus, a strange combination of original brick gothic architecture peeping out above and behind the pompous pink baroque in front. Much of the surrounding square has been sensitively restored, traffic free apart from the trams, but the middle hosts another fountain, of morose sea gods dominated by a seagull on a high pole. This Möwenbrunnen (‘seagull fountain’) is not popular with locals, and was put here during post-reunification days, at a time when the city most needed something optimistic to look at.

The Cathedral

Back in medieval times this part of Germany was heavily forested, and its mostly sandy soil has little to offer in the way of stone. So six million bricks had to be fired to build St Mary’s, some of them decoratively glazed to create a checkered, even houndstooth, exterior.

At first sight its interior seems fairly sparse. But turn back to look above the entry, and you’ll see the massive decorative wooden organ loft, from 1750. The instrument here, still in use  comprises an astonishing 5,700 organ pipes, and hanging below it is the Duke of Mecklenburg’s glazed-in royal box, a bit like a very fancy basket hanging under a hot air balloon. This is where the Duke would sit to gaze out upon his subjects, and at times, with all that organ power going on, it must have felt like it was taking off.

The other big feature of the cathedral is tucked away behind the nave. This 15th century astronomical clock is just as special as its much more famous cousin in Prague, and what it lacks in moving showtime figurines, it makes up for in complexity, ingenuity and authenticity, because whilst Prague is now electrically powered, the clockwork here is the original, and still needs to be wound up every day.

It is also far more intimate, being mostly right at eye level. Besides telling the time, the date, and having moving apostles every hour, its intricacies detail things like the phase of the moon, the state of the harvest, and the actual timings of sunrise and sunset in Rostock, every day of the year. How it survived the war is something of a miracle.

https://www.hanse.org/en/tourist/rostock

In this era of modern shipping, the original port of Wismar, once a big player in the medieval Hanseatic League’s trading empire, is too tiny to be useful.  But its shape, and the layout of the old town around it, has become key to its tourism industry, having earned Wismar UNESCO World Heritage recognition, back in 2002.

These days the old port is used primarily for recreation, whilst the new harbour right next door sits on the threshold of an extensive hinterland of wood-processing industries, as well as hosting occasional cruise ships, too.

Harbours aside, Wismar doesn’t seem to have changed a great deal since Hanseatic times, particularly at the Wassertor, a gothic gateway connecting the waterside with the town, built in 1450. Back then, Wismar was a place of breweries – some 160 of them – and its Hansa traders were also the holders of the brewing rights.

Some of its best preserved houses line Frische Grube, a port-connected canal which was far from fresh back in the day, as everyone emptied their chamber pots here. On its bank stands the giant brick gothic St Nicholas church from 1381, with a stark and unadorned interior and even a brick floor, too.  It is massive, the second highest brick church in the world after St Mary’s of Lübeck, and surrounded by a network of streets named after the trades that existed there: metalworker street, old boot street, midwife street, etc.

These days these streets and the old houses lining them are pretty quiet. Wismar hasn’t moved on as much as its Hanseatic neighbours, Rostock or Lübeck, but it does have an impressive cobbled market square, which at one hectare is the largest in northern Germany, and mercifully hasn’t become a giant car park.

The Swedish connection

It has several distinctive buildings, but a visitor’s eye cannot but help be drawn to the twin facades of the red brick Alter Schwede (now a restaurant) which dates from 1380, and its decorative art nouveau neighbour. The Alter Schwede, aka ‘old Swede’, features a striking stepped gable façade, and inside it is hung with photographs of the Swedish royal family, both ancient and modern. This is a clue to the other important, post Hansa, stage of Wismar’s history.

The Thirty Years War of the early 17^th century dragged Sweden into a Central European conflict in defence of the Protestant religion. Swedish armies, under the direction of the King Gustavus Adolphus, marched deep into German lands (although ‘Germany’ itself wasn’t to come into existence for another 250 years) but eventually retreated to the Baltic coast.

At the end of the conflict in 1648, under the Peace of Westphalia, Sweden gained time-limited ownership of much of this coastal area, including the towns of Wismar and Stralsund. This coastal strip remained Swedish for a further 150 years, until Sweden essentially sold Wismar in 1803 after their option to extend control expired.

At this point they made a balanced, and well managed exit, without any need for war. Typical Swedes.

Following the collapse of East Germany’s German Democratic Republic 30 years ago, a number of towns and cities emerged as hitherto undiscovered. Because of their remoter location they were largely undamaged by wartime bombing and their architectural splendour survived the worst of the GDR town planning.

Among such towns are Görlitz, profiled elsewhere on this site, and Schwerin, 20 miles south of Wismar and inland from the Baltic coast.

Once the historic seat of the Dukes of Mecklenburg, Schwerin, with a population just under 100,000, had always played second fiddle to its larger industrial neighbour Rostock, particularly during the days of the GDR. Rostock, as a state-supported shipbuilding city, was much more in keeping with the image the country wanted to present.

However once the reunification of Germany was completed and the Land of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern was re-established, the decision was made to restore Schwerin to its rightful place as the state capital. As an endorsement of that decision, the island-based castle and its associated buildings were made a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2024.

Neuschwanstein of the north

The jewel in the architecture of the city, Schwerin castle became the seat of the parliament of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. In the 19^th century the water-surrounded building had been the ducal residence but in 1918, the duchy ceased to exist and the castle became the property of the state.

A castle has stood on the Schwerin island since the latter years of the first millennium. The town was an important location in the medieval quest to extend eastwards along the Baltic coast. Accordingly, those earlier buildings on the island were more militaristic, but in more peaceful and prosperous recent history the emphasis changed.

Accordingly, when the current castle was built in the mid 19^th century by a group of architects including Gottfried Semper (who was responsible for building the Semper Oper in Dresden) they created one of the finest Renaissance buildings in northern Germany. It has been dubbed the Neuschwanstein of the north. In scale and in beauty it is the equal of any Loire Valley chateau, having also been partly modelled on Chambord.

The museum section of the castle can be visited daily all year round (closed Mondays) and there are also guided tours of the parliament section, on request. Alternatively you can wander through the castle gardens, one of the finest gardens to mix baroque with classical English design.

Undoubtedly the best way to appreciate views of the castle is on a trip boat on the Schweriner See, the third largest lake in Germany. These trips run from March until October and start from the pier by the castle, and besides castle views, they reveal a boathouse-dwelling culture that is unique to Mecklenburg.

Schwerin itself is a town of two halves. Close to the castle island, it is a historic and administrative centre, with state government ministries in a variety of imposing baroque and neoclassical buildings.  It has a more modern, shopping and eating quarter nearby, and a lot of its population (still not quite as numerous as in GDR days) are retirees from elsewhere in Germany, attracted by lakeside living in new luxury waterside apartments, and Schwerin’s peace and quiet.

The Grand Hotel Heiligendamm, first built in 1793, quickly became a spa retreat for the aristocracy of central Europe. But it has been a struggle to keep in going in modern times.

The Latin inscription on the pediment above the Tuscan-style columns of the Kurhaus reads Heic Te Laetitia Invitat Post Balnea Sanum. Which loosely translates as ‘joy awaits you as you emerge from your bath’.

A sentiment that is not so original, perhaps, given how many hotels today have spas, but then this is the Grand Hotel Heiligendamm, first established in 1793, which makes it Germany’s oldest and smartest seaside hotel.

The property was first established here, on the Baltic coast a dozen miles west of Rostock, at the instigation of the Duke of Schwerin. Besides the Kurhaus with its classicist facade, it comprises seven historic white mansions, surrounded by beechwoods on either side and with sweeping lawns down to a pier and a sandy beach.

It quickly became patronized by German aristocracy, by literati such as Proust and Rilke, and even by Russia’s Tsar Nicholas I. At its peak in the mid 19^th century it was a meeting place for Europe’s rich and famous, who came to bathe in the Baltic and to gamble at the first horse-racing course in Germany.  But then came two World Wars, the dismal curtain of communism, closure and decay.

Today it is back, and determined to roll back the years.

In truth, the Grand hasn’t had an easy ride even since it re-opened, post-reunification. In two short decades it was transformed from a crumbling ruin to a luxury Kempinski-steered property chosen by Angela Merkel to host 2007’s G8 summit. But despite all the associated publicity, complete with that iconic image of the world leaders in one giant tailor-made strandkorb (basketwork beach chair), it was bankrupt by 2012.

In truth, there were always going to be problems with trying to re-establish an elite beach resort on the Baltic in the era of easy air travel to the Med. Especially with no airport nearby.

Back in the day, the glitterati used to arrive at the Grand on a dedicated steam railway, built specifically to chuff them right to the front door. Today, the Molli, although charming, is more of a curiosity than a method of travel.

Then there’s the issue of retaining quality staff in a relatively remote location. Particularly because Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is the poorest of the German states, where old anti-capitalist attitudes still prevail. Moreover the beach at Heiligendamm is not much to write home about.

When it went bust in 2012, the hotel’s Perlenkette (pearl necklace) of villas had to be sold, and have since been reconstituted as luxury apartments. The remaining core buildings were bought by Paul Morzynski, a tax accountant from Hanover, who is working to re-establish the hotel by concentrating on the spa, the sanctity of the enclave and the quality of the food.

With these things in mind, he has added a spacious outdoor pool and seasonal staff accommodation. Interiors have been refreshed with silk fabrics, marble and brocade. All of it, of course, in the best possible taste.

Arriving here on a weekday night is like stepping back 50 years, to the days when it was still called Karl-Marx-Stadt. The wide streets are walled by looming brutalist blocks, and they seem practically devoid of life.  There’s a metaphorical chill in the air.

But it wasn’t always thus. This crucible of Germany’s industrial revolution kicked off in the 19^th century with textiles and then machine-making, and moved on to producing the likes of trains and cars, the bread and butter of modern Germany. But then came World War II, which destroyed 80 percent of a thriving industrial city.

Virtually the only showpiece of that most prosperous pre-war era which is still used for its original purpose is the magnificent Bauhaus-influenced public swimming pool, unchanged since the glory period of the 1930s. And then there’s Villa Esche, the art deco mansion of a stocking manufacturer from the beginning of the 20^th century.

After the War, the GDR did a hasty rebuild and tried to make Chemnitz a socialist showpiece and a powerhouse of mechanical engineering. They re-named it Karl-Marx-Stadt and installed the giant head of Marx himself on a wide boulevard intended for grand parades. The 40 tonne bust is still there, despite the fact that the man himself never set foot in the city. And when the Berlin Wall came down, three quarters of the population voted to go back to the original name, ‘Chemnitz’.

A lot of them also left at the first opportunity, largely because all that government-run industry was based on outdated technology, and accordingly went belly up as the Wall came down. At that point there was a mass exodus of 80,000 mostly well educated citizens, and the 260,000 who remained felt overlooked and unloved. Unsurprisingly, the right wing AfD Alternative for Germany is strong here.

Capital of Culture

In an attempt to bring the city in from the cold it was designated as one of two European Capitals of Culture in 2025. Special exhibitions, installations and events brought in a lot of interested visitors, and have restored some of the citizens’ self respect. The heart of downtown around the Old and New Town Halls embodies something of the pre-war era, albeit as a reconstruction, surrounded by a bit of a dogs dinner of modernist styles. But beyond that Chemnitz remains indisputably a physically unappealing place, thrown together in too much of a hurry after World War II by a regime that cared little for flair and individualism.

Today one thing that Chemnitz does have, in spades, is museums, converted from former industrial complexes. For example the Industrial Museum in a magnificently restored former foundry where it shows a copious cross-section of two centuries of manufacturing output.

There are galleries, too, particularly the Gunzenhauser, in a former bank, which is particularly good at researching and exhibiting artists from this part of Germany, and from other destinations in central and eastern Europe.

For someone interested in Germany in general, and in its recent history, Chemnitz is worth a visit.  It is certainly a journey of discovery. And a big blast from the past.

The Colossus of Prora may sound like a piece of ancient history, but don’t be fooled by the name. This giant of a building (originally the longest in the world at a massive 4.5km) was built on the holiday island of Rügen by the Nazi party between the two World Wars.

Prora was planned to be an all-inclusive resort on an unprecedented scale, a new kind of tourism for the masses with 20,000 beds. It was the prototype of a handful of mega resorts intended by Adolf Hitler to create a nation of ‘people with strong nerves’, so they wouldn’t fail in a fight.

You can see why this location on the causeway-connected island of Rügen was chosen. The 10km beach here is of magnificent silky white sand, and back in the early 20^th century it was already attracting elite holidaymakers, who built themselves handsome villas in the fashionable spa settlement of Binz, at the beach’s south-eastern end.

Prora, however, was intended for the masses, but it never opened. It was just nearing completion when World War II broke out, and after Germany’s defeat it was garrisoned by Soviet troops, who blew bits of it up, for fun. The Stasi, the secret police, took over the remains for a while, and then for many years it was left to fall apart, shrouded in trees.

But now this sleeping giant has been reborn. In the course of the past decade, the five blocks still standing of the original eight have become a mix of hotel, youth hostel and luxury apartments.  Today, serried rows of glass balconies glint in the sun, each six-storey block slightly different to its neighbour, extending into the distance as far as the eye can see. Swimming pools sit out front, and at its road-served back, there’s newly-planted saplings and an endless repetition of protruding stairwells every 50 metres. There are a couple of spa hotels – the Dormero and the Solitaire – and a sprinkling of coffee shops, restaurants and a supermarket in the centre.

There is, however, very little reference to the building’s history, apart from in the dowdy looking Documentation Centre, where the exhibition MACHTUrlaub (‘make holidays’) fills in the detail. Here you learn how the centralised design was such that guests would have had to walk as far as 2.2km through the interconnected buildings, carrying their luggage, to reach their rooms. And how the daily programme would have included parades and communal games which may not have been described as compulsory, but there would have been informers amongst the holidaymakers, noting the non-participants. It was a matter of ‘have fun, or else’.

Along the shore

The beach itself is serenely unchanged since Prora was conceived, apart from lavish new (slightly military-looking) lifeguard posts, and regular signboards announcing ‘textilfrei’ stretches. During the post-war GDR times, FKK or Freikörperkultur was a big deal for people who wanted to experience some sense of freedom in the face of an unduly repressive state.

The original resort of Binz itself remains a period piece. The sand is demarcated with neat ranks of Strandkörbe, wicker beach chairs, which can be rotated to face the sun whilst turning their backs to the wind. There’s a pier, a bandstand outside the grand Kurhaus, and a shaded shoreside promenade that is lined with stalls selling trinkets and Milchreis, rice pudding with fruit puree.

Inland, villas of distinctive Bäder architecture, a mix of art nouveau and Long Island clapperboard, line its streets behind white picket fences with their ornate wooden balconies, rooftop gables, octagons, lanterns, and domes. Once private properties, with staff, they are now mostly sub-divided into apartments.

Binz is no longer a posh place for holidays, although the key activities are still the same:  a steamer still runs from the end of the pier to the chalk cliffs of the Königsstuhl, or King’s Chair, which were memorably painted by Caspar David Friedrich, the 19^th century Romantic landscape painter who played a big part in making Rügen popular.  And the ‘Raging Roland’ steam train still weaves its way along the coast to subsidiary resorts of Sellin, Baabe and Göhren, chugging past allotments and through thin forests of oak and beech, dappled with sunlight and laced with footpaths.

Everyone has heard of Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, the former crossing point between the American sector in the West and the Soviet sector in the East. But how did it get that name?

The answer lies 120 miles to the west, at the former border crossing between Helmstedt in former West Germany (FRG) and Marienborn in former East Germany (GDR), once known as Checkpoint Alpha.

To complete the lexicon of the day, in between the two was Checkpoint Bravo on the outskirts of the city where traffic that had passed through Alpha and East Germany entered West Berlin (which was surrounded at the time). So the naming was as simple as ABC.

The GDR government began erecting the fortifications at Checkpoint Alpha in the mid 1950s, several years before the Berlin Wall was built, to make crossing from East to West as difficult as possible.

Whilst the crossing was marked by a modest building on the Helmstedt (western) side of the border, the operation was of a much greater size in Marienborn over in the east. Over the years, particularly in the 1970s when much greater cross-border traffic was permitted, it evolved into a large complex that housed up to 1,000 guards, police, security officials and other personnel (including Stasi officers) until it was dismantled following reunification of the two countries in 1990. The entire site has been designated a monument of national heritage, and is now the largest existing memorial to the internal border.

A huge operation

Adding to the overall sense of intimidation, alongside the East German security apparatus the Soviet Red Army had a base in Marienborn, whose sole purpose was to accompany Allied (US, British or French) traffic passing through it en route to West Berlin. The process of crossing the border could take hours with cars often secretly XRayed or even taken apart during examination by extremely thorough and officious guards. It was never a pleasant experience.

Not all the original buildings remain but there are sufficient to get a feel for the size of the security operation. The installations on the western side have been demolished but on the eastern side the passport control point for cars, the checkpoint for lorries, the light masts (the whole site was illuminated in the dark), the administration offices, the watchtower and even the morgue are still there.

These have now been turned into a museum about the former border, entry to which is free.  Within the Passport control office there is a permanent exhibition charting in chronological order the development of the fortifications at the site and the story of the border in general. There are also a variety of other exhibitions detailing how the checkpoint worked and the methods taken by the GDR to prevent illicit border crossings. There is a display of artefacts from the time including the guns used by the guards.

The whole site can be walked freely (though the inside of some buildings are inaccessible) and gives an indication of the efforts the GDR went to in order to restrict the movements of its citizens. It is a perfect monument to that country’s attempts to control and intimidate its captive population. – Mark Arrol

Magdeburg, located on the Elbe halfway between Hamburg and Dresden, is one of Germany’s oldest cities, with its massive cathedral tracing its roots back to 937. However history hasn’t been kind to it, having been destroyed twice over, first in the Thirty Years War (when as a prominent Protestant city it was sacked by Imperial troops in 1631) and second when it was levelled by heavy Allied bombing during World War II.

As one of the largest cities in the German Democratic Republic, aka communist East Germany, the postwar reconstruction can be described as functional at best. The Elbe, such a popular attraction further upriver in Dresden and Saxon Switzerland, became little more than an industrial waterway as it passed through Magdeburg.

However the city now boasts one of the most individual buildings helping to revitalise the region. The Grüne Zitadelle is the last project designed by the Austrian artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Although not completed until 2005, five years after his death, this eccentric multi-purpose building reflects his philosophy of creating unique spaces for individuals, places not just ‘to be’, but also ‘to experience’. He saw structures as people’s third skin (after their actual skin and their clothing).

The perfect antidote

The original discussions about the development took place at the end of the 1990s, and the site was selected and the designs completed just before Hundertwasser died. The architect, whose style has been compared to Gaudí (responsible for the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona), passionately advocated individual building design and rejected anything thought to be uninspiring.  Consequently post communist Magdeburg, with its abundance of extremely functional and utilitarian architecture, was the perfect place to host this project.

The architect’s famous multicoloured Hundertwasserhaus in his native Vienna has undulating floors, trees growing from inside rooms and a roof covered in earth and grass. The Grüne Zitadelle was designed and built in a similar style, but with a bright pink exterior thrown in for added measure. No two windows are the same, whilst trees grow out of the building and are planted on the roof, thereby furnishing the building with the green element in Grüne Zitadelle.

Functionally it has a variety of uses. The ground floor features shops, business premises and a café, the Alt Magdeburg. The ART hotel Magdeburg, with over 40 rooms and suites, is on the second floor, along with a theatre and a crèche (which uses the roof garden for its outdoor play area), whilst the top floor features 55 individually designed (naturally) apartments.

After the nearby cathedral, this has become Magdeburg’s second most popular tourist attraction. Guided tours (in German), lasting an hour will give a greater understanding about the man and his philosophy.

Many a visitor to Germany will have come across its all-year-round Christmas shops, filled with painted wooden figures, but very few ever make it to the remote fold in the nation’s eastern hills where most of

these figures are made. This is Seiffen, a village in the Ore (Erzgebirge) Mountain range south of Dresden, where it lines the border with the Czech Republic.

Despite their name, these ‘mountains’ don’t get much higher than 500 metres, so the Ore is primarily farming and forestry country, dotted with barns and hamlets. Seiffen is one of its biggest settlements, and there are some 130 individual workshops here, most small, but a couple of them employing over 50 people. Instead of farming, Seiffen’s villagers spend their days sandpapering angel’s wings and putting the moustaches on wooden policemen. Nutcrackers are a local speciality, as are angels, pyramids, arches, and smoking men.

Mining man

Amongst the community’s creations there’s one dominant figure, often dressed in red, who looks like a soldier, but is actually a miner in ceremonial dress. That’s because the former wealth of these hills is under the ground, and the carvers’ ancestors were originally carpenters in the local gold and silver mines. As the mining industry faded – Seiffen’s last closed in 1849 – these carpenters experimented with timber offcuts in their spare time. Back then, they were mainly for community gift-giving: a symbolic figure of a miner in ceremonial uniform traditionally celebrated the birth of a boy, a guardian angel celebrated a girl. These figures became so much part of local lore that they are even found decorating the interior of Seiffen’s very pretty pointy-hatted church.

Today, up to 800 different products are made locally, and a couple of big enterprises in town are obvious tourist attractions for visitors, offering workshop tours: they are Seiffener Volkskunst, at the entry to the village, and Richard Glässer on Haupstrasse, the biggest enterprise in town with 80 employees. Both have copious shops that are a twinkly treasury of fairy-lit carvings, and beyond Glässer’s retail section, a doorway leads into a workshop spread across three floors. Here a series of production lines of disembodied heads and torsos smelling of paint, glue and sawdust are carefully scrutinized by local ladies wielding fine-tipped paintbrushes.

The Seiffen best-sellers are the nutcrackers, actually miners in ceremonial costumes with lever-operated jaws; various styles of pyramid, rotating constructions topped with fans and with nativity figures below; and Schwibbogen candle-lit arches, most commonly seen as eyebrows of light in household windows all over Europe.

For an outsider, the output of this overgrown village may seem both expensive and un-Teutonically kitsch, but when you know the mining backstory, and how everything is still made by hand and not in China, it all begins to make sense.

Meissen is a small town on the Elbe about 15 miles downriver from Dresden, with the prominent Albrechtsburg castle and Meissener Dom (one of the smallest cathedrals in Europe) squashed together on a patch of raised ground above the water. The town has existed for over 1,000 years and was the capital of Saxony until the 15^th century, when the royal court moved to Dresden.

Scenic though these sites are, what really makes the town special is its longstanding association with some of the finest porcelain manufactured anywhere outside China.

The first European porcelain was produced here in 1708. The key to the success of the manufacture of what was known as ‘white gold’ was the large deposits of kaolin (China clay) and potters’ earth to be found in the nearby hills. Two years later the first factory was commissioned by King Augustus the Strong of Saxony at the Albrechtsburg castle. In the mid 19^th century production was moved to the Triebisch valley where it has remained to this day.

With its trademark logo of two crossed blue swords, Meissen is possibly the most famous and recognised porcelain brand in the world. Sitting on a back catalogue of over 700,000 moulds and with over 10,000 colours the factory claims to have the most variety of any manufacturer worldwide. Famous for its figurines and tableware, the company’s products have been able to maintain their reputation for the highest quality for the best part of three centuries.

In the 19^th century its pieces were highly sought after among the ruling classes in Europe, which often built up huge collections. A Meissen porcelain chocolate pot from around 1780 formed one of the wedding gifts for Queen Elizabeth II.

During the period of the German Democratic Republic the Meissen porcelain works were one of the few businesses that operated profitably and continued to export internationally, thereby bringing in much needed foreign currency for the communist regime.

How to visit

The factory is open to visitors all year round (except Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day) and offers daily guided tours plus a visit to the Meissen museum. As a measure of its international renown, the accompanying audio guide is available in 14 different languages. Visits start with a 30 minute tour of four studios where artists demonstrate base throwing, plate painting, figure moulding and glazing. The museum then allows visitors to appreciate historic pieces at their own leisure.

Whilst in Meissen visitors should include a walk up to the castle and its adjacent cathedral. The castle features an exhibit on the initial production of porcelain in the 18^th century, but the views from here over the Elbe are worth the walk alone.

The town is easily reached by taking S1 from Dresden, with trains running every 30 minutes. – Mark Arrol