Culture - Germany is Wunderbar

Germany Holidays: Prora, a giant resort with a dark past

Built by the Nazis as a giant holiday resort for the masses, Prora on Germany’s Baltic coast has recently been reborn as a complex of upmarket apartments and hotels

Germany Holidays: Checkpoint Alpha

Everyone knows Checkpoint Charlie, in Berlin, but Checkpoint Alpha in Helmstedt was far more active – and a lot of it is still there, as a memorial to the internal border between West and East.

Germany Holidays: Schwerin, a gem in the east

Left alone by the industrial development of the former East, Schwerin and its castle have recaptured their ducal majesty since Reunification

Germany Holidays: Wismar, Germany’s little Sweden

A big chunk of Germany’s Baltic coast around Wismar was once Swedish, and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Germany Holidays: Magdeburg’s zany Zitadelle

Magdeburg’s bleak recent history is readily overlooked when you clap eyes on its zany Grüne Zitadelle, a multi-use building by Austrian genius Hundertwasser.

Germany Holidays: The real Santa’s workshop

Seiffen, a former mining village in the Ore Mountains south of Dresden, has around 130 workshops making traditional wooden figures and decorations for Christmas shops and markets

Germany Holidays: Meissen and porcelain

The story of how a small town on the Elbe became the centre of European porcelain production and remains so right up to the present day.

Germany Holidays: Mecklenburg’s live-aboard waterways

A little-known world of lakes and waterways lies pillowed in rolling agricultural land north of Berlin. A bit of adventure, a bit of history, and a lot of nature.