Hanover travel guide

Top 10 sights in Hanover

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

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   1© Carsten Steger · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Herrenhausen Gardens

   The baroque gardens of the summer palace of the Hanover electors, laid out from 1666 and mostly to a design by Martin Charbonnier. Leibniz worked here as librarian, and the Great Garden survived the war better than the palace did.

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   Baitus Sami

   An Ahmadiyya mosque in Hanover, among the earlier purpose-built mosques of that community in Germany, whose name means house of the hearer. The community has built more than fifty mosques across the country since the 1950s.

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   3© H. Helmlechner · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Market Church

   The main Lutheran church of Hanover, a fourteenth-century brick hall church with a 98-metre tower, recorded in 1342 as dedicated to James the Greater and George. It was gutted in 1943 and rebuilt; its bronze doors of 1957 show twentieth-century figures including a concentration camp scene.

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   Hanover Zoo

   A zoo of 4 May 1865 in the Mitte district, twenty-two hectares holding about 3,400 animals of 237 species, rebuilt from 1996 into themed landscapes rather than cages. Its Yukon Bay and Zambezi sections are among the most imitated zoo designs in Europe.

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   Sprengel Museum

   A museum of modern art on the Maschsee, opened in 1979 around the collection of the chocolate manufacturer Bernhard Sprengel, and one of the most important in Germany for twentieth-century art. Its Kurt Schwitters holdings and the reconstructed Merzbau are the reason to come.

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   Kestnergesellschaft

   An art institution founded in 1916 to promote contemporary art, and one of the largest Kunstvereine in Germany. It has no permanent collection; it mounts exhibitions in the Goseriedebad, a converted municipal swimming hall.

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   Herrenhausen Palace

   The Hanover electors' summer palace, destroyed by bombing in 1943 and rebuilt in 2013 behind a reconstructed classical facade as a conference centre. The Great Garden it stands in survived, and a small museum in the side wings covers the dynasty that gave Britain its kings.

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8. 

   8© Roel Hemkes · CC BY 2.0

   Landesmuseum Hannover

   The state museum of Lower Saxony, opened in 1902 opposite the parliament, combining archaeology, ethnography, natural history with an aquarium, and a painting gallery running from the Middle Ages to Impressionism. Four museums under one roof, which is unusual even in Germany.

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   9© Christian A. Schröder (ChristianSchd) · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Basilica St. Clemens

   Hanover's principal Catholic church, built between 1711 and 1718 to plans by the Italian architect Tommaso Giusti on a domed central plan. Gutted in the air raids of 1943 and rebuilt in the 1950s, it serves the Diocese of Hildesheim.

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10. 

    10© Bobanaut · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Telemax

    A telecommunications tower of 1992 designed by Hans Ulrich Rudolph, at 282 metres the tallest structure in Hanover and the tallest telecommunications tower in Lower Saxony. It has no public observation deck.

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   Waterloosäule

   A 46-metre column of 1832 in the Waterloo square, honouring the Hanoverian troops who fought Napoleon in 1815 — including the King's German Legion, which held La Haye Sainte all day. A Victoria stands on top and the names of the dead are inside.

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   2© Christian A. Schröder (ChristianSchd) · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Aegidienkirche

   The shell of a fourteenth-century church, bombed on 9 October 1943 and deliberately left roofless as a memorial to the victims of war. A peace bell from Hiroshima hangs in it, given in 1985 when the two cities became partners.

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   Aviation Museum Hannover-Laatzen

   A permanent aviation exhibition at Laatzen south of Hanover, with about forty aircraft from early gliders to jets, along with engines and a Ju 52 cockpit. It traces German aviation chronologically and is run largely by volunteers.

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   4© ChristianSchd · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Kröpcke

   The central square of Hanover at the five-way crossing of Georgstraße, Karmarschstraße, Bahnhofstraße and Rathenaustraße, named after a nineteenth-century café owner. Its clock is the city's standard meeting point and the underground station beneath it is the busiest in Lower Saxony.

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   5© Hombre · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Hanover Historical Museum

   The city history museum, built around the surviving Beginenturm of the medieval wall, covering Hanover from a market settlement through the electorate to the personal union with Britain. State coaches of the Hanoverian kings are its largest exhibits.

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   6© Carsten Steger · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Berggarten

   A botanical garden at Herrenhausen that began as the court kitchen garden in 1666, and now holds one of the largest orchid collections in Europe under glass, along with a cactus and succulent house. The royal mausoleum with the graves of the electors is at its far end.

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   7© © Ra Boe / Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 de

   Hanover War Cemetery

   A Commonwealth cemetery near Hanover holding the graves of about 2,500 servicemen, many of them airmen shot down over northern Germany and prisoners who died in local camps. Graves were concentrated here from scattered sites after 1945.

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   8© Joyofmuseums · CC BY-SA 4.0

   August Kestner Museum

   A museum of antiquities and applied art founded on the collection of August Kestner, a Hanoverian diplomat in Rome, with Egyptian, Greek and Roman holdings and European craft from the Middle Ages on. A perforated metal box was built around the old building in 1961.

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   9© Ra Boe · CC BY-SA 2.5

   Wilhelm Busch Museum

   A museum in the Georgengarten devoted to Wilhelm Busch, the nineteenth-century satirist whose Max und Moritz is a forerunner of the comic strip, together with European caricature and drawing generally. Its Gillray and Daumier holdings are substantial.

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    10© Carsten Steger · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Georgengarten

    An English landscape garden at Herrenhausen with a lime avenue 1,500 metres long running straight to the baroque Great Garden. It was laid out from 1700 and opened to the public early, which was unusual for a court garden.

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