Lüneburg is a small town of 70 000 inhabitants which offers a contrast between the medieval charm of the architecture of the city, great pubs for the nowadays students and a salty story. Situated on the Elba River this is a town that is old enough to show that history has passed here. Over 1000 years old this town is still one of the prettiest towns in northern Germany.
Stroll the streets of the western Old Town, and notice the crooked and cracked houses there. You could say it is due to the salt of the earth. With the wooden houses of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance opulence, it is no wonder that this town has been the setting for many movies.
Salt has long been a source of wealth, even called the “white gold”. It was also the reason for this city’s growth, to become part of the Hanseatic League, a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns that rose to become a superpower on the northern shores of Europe. We cannot forget the story of Heinrich Heine, a famous German writer and journalist of the 19th century, and a famous son of Lüneburg, born in today’s Heinrich-Heine-Haus. The building is a 15th-century patrician building, today housing state departments and an apartment for writers subsidized by the German state.