Every design for Bremen

In front of the town hall on Bremen's marketplace, the stone Roland stands guard, and sooner or later every visitor ends up photographing him. Together with the town hall he forms a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but for the people of Bremen he is simply part of the furniture of daily life, as familiar as the Weser that runs through the middle of the city.

Ask locals what Bremen feels like and many will talk about the Böttcherstraße, a narrow lane that seems to belong to another world, or the towers of the St. Petri-Dom rising above the square. Children grow up with the Town Musicians of Bremen from the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale, whose statue stands beside the town hall. The Schütting, home of the old merchants, recalls the centuries when this free city sat at the centre of the Hanseatic trade across the North Sea and the Baltic, and the Hafenmuseum Speicher XI tells of the port that still ranks among Germany's biggest.

Bremen has always insisted on minding its own business. If you are from here, you know that stubborn independence well – so take a bit of it with you.