Why you should make Hanover your next city break holiday

Little jewel rather than big beast, enchanting Hanover – the capital and largest city of Lower Saxony, located south of Hamburg and west of Berlin – is a German treasure that’s well worth discovering.

You can explore it for yourself via British Airways, which flies to Hanover every day from London Heathrow – the flight takes about an hour and a half. What's more, with British Airways Holidays, you can book your flights and hotel all in one place.

This, of course, is only the latest connection between London and Hanover. The two cities have been firmly linked since August 1714, when George Louis, the Prince of Brunswick-Lüneburg, became Britain’s new King George I.

In doing so, he heralded the arrival of the Georgian era, and with it, the Hanoverian dynasty. The personal union lasted 123 years, and ended in 1837 with Victoria’s accession to the throne.

It is an era which still sings sweetly in the city where this regal line began – up on the north-west side of the centre in Herrenhausen Palace and its surrounding royal gardens. Here is the former summer residence of the Royal House of Hanover, a place where kings would catch their breath amid flower-framed pathways and ornamental fountains.

The palace – now a museum – may be a 21st-century reconstruction (the original was destroyed in the Second World War), but the gardens are as glorious as they were in the 1700s. Stroll here, amid the avenues of trees and the Baroque flourishes, and you would believe you have time-travelled to the same century.

You might think you are still there when you head back into the centre and visit the similarly gorgeous, castle-like New Town Hall on Trammplatz.

However, this vaguely Gothic feast of arches, spires and turrets is much younger than it appears: it was completed little more than a century ago, in 1913.

It also has a curious quirk. Visitors can go into its main, central dome, via a lift which takes a curving route as it rises – its 50-metre shaft arcing upwards at an angle of 17 degrees.

If this is unusual, the view from the observation platform (98m) is classically beautiful, gazing south to the Maschsee. Technically, this long lake is artificial – a conversion of former swampland into something far lovelier. The plan, carried out in the 1930s, worked: the Maschsee is one of Hanover’s favourite leisure spots; a place for swimming and boating.

In summer, it hosts the Maschseefest, a three-week festival (taking place 31 July to 18 August in 2024) where fireworks explode over the water in the evening sky, and the shore is alive with food and music. The popular event draws in two million people every year.

The rest of Hanover unfurls via the Red Thread, a 4.2km trail painted onto the pavement, which winds through the city, connecting 36 key sights.

These include the medieval echoes of the Altstadt (old town), which was also heavily rebuilt after the Second World War, but also still home to the marvel that is the Kreuzkirche, Hanover’s oldest church, which was completed in 1333.

There are also shops galore in the Altstadt, and a flea market takes place regularly on the edge of the river Leine.

Alternatively, take an extra day to visit one of the towns elsewhere in Lower Saxony – pretty Goslar, 60 miles to the south-east, in the shadow of the Harz Mountains, or Hamelin, the home of the tale of the Pied Piper, 30 miles to the south-west.

To book your city break to Hanover, please visit ba.com/hanover

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