Germany Guide
Lower Saxony
Hohen Ufer
Hohen Ufer promenade stretches along the River Leine, its name a nod to the "high banks" above the floodline that inspired the first citizens to found "Honoevere" in the tenth century. Opposite, three buxom belles pirouette like extras from a scene in The Yellow Submarine as imagined by Picasso. For sober Hannover residents, the psychedelic Nanas sculptures created by New York artist Niki de Saint-Phalle were not simply derogatory, they were expensive, too – with characteristic pragmatism, it was pointed out the Nanas' DM150,000 price tag could have paid for three rapid-response cars for doctors – and the people demanded Hannover's Experiment Strassenkunst (Street Art Experiment) conducted in the early 1970s be brought to a hasty conclusion. Inevitably, the bulging Nanas are now treasured as colourful icons of a largely faceless city. There's more of the artist's work in the Sprengel-Museum and the Herrenhäuser Garten.
Britons will recognize the lion-and-unicorn crest on Duke Georg Ludwig's (King George I) former stables gateway Tor des Marstalls on the Historisches Museum's north side. Beyond the gateway and across Burgstrasse is a sweet courtyard, Ballhof, lined with restaurants and galleries. Hannover had most definitely arrived when Henry the Lion, all-powerful duke of Saxony, convened court on this spot in 1163, but it's the seventeenth-century sports hall (now the Lower Saxony State Theatre) in which Duke Georg Wilhelm swiped at shuttlecocks that gives Ballhof its name.