Lüneburg Travel Guide
A detailed destination guide for your next Germany vacation
Lüneburg Overview
Lüneburg, also known as Lueneburg and Lunenburg in English, is a city in the German state of Lower Saxony. The city is located about 45 km (30 miles) — a thirty-minute train ride — southeast of fellow Hanseatic city Hamburg (Hamburg vacation rentals | Hamburg travel guide). It is part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region, and one of Hamburg's inner suburbs. The capital of the district of Lüneburg, it has a population of around 72 000. The urban area, which includes the surrounding communities like Adendorf (Adendorf vacation rentals | Adendorf travel guide), Bardowick, and Reppenstedt, has a population of around 103 000. Lüneburg has been allowed to use the title "Hansestadt" (Hanseatic city) in its name since 2007, in recognition of its membership in the former Hanseatic League. The official name of the city is thus Hansestadt Lüneburg (Hanseatic City of Lüneburg); the city is also a Universitätsstadt (university city). As of December 2007, the city was the 120th largest in the Federal Republic of Germany.
The Ilmenau River, a tributary of the Elbe, flows through Lüneburg and features in the city's song; it was formerly traversed by cogs taking salt from the city to the other, larger ports of the Hanseatic League nearby. To the south of the city stretches the 7.400 km² Lüneburger Heide. According to tradition, this heath developed as a result of centuries of logging undertaken to meet the constant need of the Lüneburg salt works for wood. This constant mining of the salt deposits over which the city exists has also resulted in the sometimes gradual, sometimes dramatically pronounced sinking of various areas of the city. On the western edge of the city is the Kalkberg, a small hill and former gypsum quarry.
Where to stay in Lüneburg?
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Things to See in Lüneburg
German salt museum in the buildings of the former Saline, where the importance of salt in the Middle Ages and the salt production vividly illustrated
Museum of the Principality of Lüneburg, in which the city's history and the history of the environment are presented
Theater Lüneburg
Outstanding buildings are the three remaining city churches St. Locust on sand (completed 1370), the Church of St. Michaelis, where Johann Sebastian Bach was a choir boy from 1700 to 1702, and the almost modern-looking church of St. Nikolai , which was built from 1407.
Before the gates of the old city is also the monastery Lünen
[ source: wikipedia ]
Maps and Driving Directions to Lüneburg
Lüneburg is part of the transportation company Hamburger Verkehrsverbund. There are 11 bus lines in the urban area of Lüneburg. The city has a main railroad station and a smaller one located in Bardowick. The next bigger cities within easy reach by train are Hamburg, Hannover, Lübeck, Lauenburg, Uelzen and Winsen.
Lüneburg
[ source: Flickr]
Related Sites
We collected some useful links related to Lüneburg. If you know a few more sites not listed here, or also know some insider tips or point of interests for this destination? Please share and submit your Germany travel tip. If approved it will be shown on this page!
- Homepage of Lüneburg: Lüneburg (official home page)
- Wikipedia: Lüneburg
More about the History of Lüneburg
The ancient town is probably to be identified with Leufana or Leuphana (Greek: Λευφάνα), a town listed in Ptolemy (2.10) in the north of Germany on the west of the Elbe, but this identification is not universally accepted. The first evidence of human habitation in the area is from the Upper Paleolithic: 56 axes, estimated at 15 000 years old, were uncovered in the area during the construction in the 1990s of the Autobahn between Ochtmissen and Bardowick. The area was almost certainly not continuously inhabited, however, due to the Ice Ages. The first indication of real settlement in the area is an axe found between Lüne and Bardowick that dates to the 6th century BCE; other items have been discovered dating to as early as 1900 BCE.
In spite of the discovery of this all-important spice and food preservative, Lüneburg was not the most important city in the area. Bardowick, a major Slavic trading site, was older, wealthier, and — with seven churches — more significant in terms of religious; this made it the political centre of the area. Bardowick, however, fought against Henry the Lion, and when it lost, Henry raised it to the ground in 1189 whilst simultaneously granting Lüneburg city status and a monopoly on the extraction of salt for northern Germany. This monopoly made Lüneburg wealthy and important, and the city acceded at a very early date to the Hanseatic League. Lüneburg's salt was used to preserve the herings caught in the Baltic and in the waters around Norway; this quickly made the city — along with the herring-processing centres of Visby, Lübeck (Lübeck vacation rentals | Lübeck travel guide), and Bergen (Bergen vacation rentals | Bergen travel guide) — one of the wealthiest and most important in the league. The salt from the city was at first conveyed overland, along the Old Salt Route via Lauenburg to Lübeck; with the opening of the Stecknitz Canal in 1398 the salt could be transported by cog.
[ source: wikipedia ]
What makes this Live Like a German Lüneburg Travel Guide special...
This Lüneburg travel guide provides you with an overview of Lüneburg, Lüneburg pictures, and a local travel guide that suggests many special trips, unique activities, and vacation ideas, that you can't find in a typical Germany travel guide.
Some of this information is compiled from popular and well-known sources (e.g., such as Wikipedia, Wikitravel, and great pictures from Flickr). However, what makes this Germany travel guide special is that most of the travel suggestions and insider tips are provided by local residents, property owners, and our readers, who share and submit their travel tips with us. All submissions are then editorially reviewed to ensure high quality. All this information is logically organized within this destination guide to make it easy for you to find things quickly.
In addition, the Lüneburg destination guide features restaurant recommendations, restaurant reviews, where to go for grocery shopping, sports activities, getting around, cultural events and highlights, entertainment, and health related information - so you are informed for your travel to Germany, and you can learn about all the cool things you can do during your Germany vacation!
