Every design for Hildesheim

Have you ever crossed the Historischer Marktplatz on a Saturday morning, coffee in hand, and forgotten for a moment that you are walking through more than a thousand years of history? That is everyday life in Hildesheim.

The city lies south-east of Hanover on the Innerste, a tributary of the Leine, at the meeting point of hill country and the flat Börde, with the Hildesheimer Wald to the south. A ford across the river on the old Hellweg trade route gave the first settlement its reason to be, and the bishopric founded here by Louis the Pious made it one of the oldest cities in northern Germany. Two of its churches, the Hoher Dom St. Mariä Himmelfahrt and St. Michaelis, are on the World Heritage list, and the Basilika St. Godehard adds a third great church. A street called Alter Markt still marks where the first market was held, and the city joined the Hanseatic League in the Middle Ages. Three universities keep it lively today.

If you grew up here, you learned the way to school between cathedral, market and river. The map shows it just as you remember.