Every design for Stade

Is there a better place to come home to than an old Hanseatic town on an island in the Schwinge? Stade was first recorded in 934. Vikings looted it in the 990s, Danish kings fought over it in the early 13th century, and from the 13th century until the late 17th it was a prominent member of the Hanseatic League, before Hamburg overshadowed it.

The Schwedenspeicher, now a museum, keeps that trading past alive, while the Freilichtmuseum auf der Insel shows how people lived on the land around. In 1209 Emperor Otto IV declared the burghers of Stade personally free, and that sense of a town with its own mind has never quite left. The old centre is ringed by its moat, the Kunsthaus brings art into the timber-framed streets that put Stade on the German Timber-Frame Road, and in the outer districts, Bützfleth, Hagen, Haddorf and Wiepenkathen each still keep a council of their own.

Whether you grew up by the moat, out in the marshes towards the Elbe or in one of those four villages, Stade is part of who you are. Take it with you.