Hanover

Twenty-five stops held together by the Red Thread, a painted line that since 1970 has linked 36 sights over 4.2 kilometres of the city centre. Beyond it, the Herrenhausen Gardens to the north-west with the Great Garden of some 50 hectares.

The Great Garden goes back to Sophia of the Palatinate, who had it laid out in the Dutch Baroque manner from 1679. Under the Act of Settlement of 1701 she was heir to the British throne. She died at Herrenhausen on 8 June 1714, seven weeks before Queen Anne; the crown went instead to her son Georg Ludwig, who became George I. The personal union between Hanover and London lasted until 1837.

Reconstruction changed the city a second time. On the night of 8 to 9 October 1943, 1,245 people died and 250,000 lost their homes; by the end of the war the centre was 90 per cent destroyed. From 1948 the city architect Rudolf Hillebrecht rebuilt Hanover as a car-friendly city, while the ruin of the Aegidienkirche was left standing as a memorial. The New Town Hall of 1901 to 1913 rests on 6,026 beech piles. Expo 2000 expected 40 million visitors and counted 18.1 million.