Every design for Peine

Peine sits where the River Fuhse meets the Mittellandkanal, roughly halfway between Hanover and Braunschweig on the flat geest of Lower Saxony. Its story begins with a castle: a deed from 1130 names Berthold von Pagin, and Count Gunzelin von Wolfenbüttel later founded the town just south of the castle, in 1218 or 1220. His coat of arms is still the town's emblem, and in 1260 Peine won the right to mint its own coins.

That position between larger neighbours, Hanover forty kilometres to the west, Braunschweig to the east and Hildesheim to the south-west, made Peine a prize for every ruler around, and it was drawn into feud after feud. Steel later gave it a different kind of fame. In April 1945 the teacher Hans Michael Finger helped surrender the town to American troops and spared it further shelling, and in the following decade two great medieval silver hoards turned up beneath its streets.

The castle itself is long gone, but the Burgpark keeps its place on the map, the Kreismuseum Peine keeps its stories, and for anyone coming back, the quiet line of the canal tells them they are home.