Every design for Lippstadt

Lippstadt grew up in the valley of the Lippe, its historic centre tucked between several branches of the river that gave the town its name. It is the largest town in the district of Soest, set in the open country of the Westphalian Bay with the Haarstrang rising to the south.

Home here can mean many things. A Sunday walk out along the Lippeaue Lipperode - Esbeck, one of the town's nature reserves, or the climb up the Rixbecker Hügel. Crossing yet another little bridge on the way past the Kleine Marienkirche, or a school trip to the Stadtmuseum. It also means a long history worn lightly: a medieval Hanseatic town, one of the first to embrace Lutheranism, and for centuries a place shared between the county of Lippe and the Prussian crown before it became wholly Prussian in 1851. Today it is an industrial town and a university town too, with a campus of the Hochschule Hamm-Lippstadt.

If you grew up between these river branches, you know exactly which bridge was yours and where the water was best on a summer evening. Keep that map with you.