Every design for Lübeck

Past the Holstentor and across the water, the old town of Lübeck fills a densely built island ringed by the Trave – Germany's most extensive UNESCO World Heritage Site. Daily life here moves between a university with its medical centre, a technical university, an academy of music and the old boats of the Museumshafen, and the city's best-known speciality is never far away: Lübeck Marzipan, honoured with its own museum.

There is a particular pride that comes with a city that was the cradle of the Hanseatic League. Lübeck law was adopted by around 100 towns around the Baltic, and the city kept its independence from 1226 until 1937. That sense of standing lives on in the Heiligen-Geist-Hospital, the Europäisches Hansemuseum and the Burgtor, and in summer it carries down the river to the beaches of Travemünde, where the Trave meets the Bay of Lübeck.

The concrete detail is the skyline: seven towers on five main churches, six of them taller than 100 metres – more than in any other city in the world.