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Lubeck was the Queen of the Hanseatic League, the greatest trading network of medieval northern Europe, and from the fourteenth century onward it dominated Baltic commerce with the confidence of a city that knew it controlled the flow of salted herring, furs, and amber across an entire sea. The Old Town, compressed onto an island between two rivers, became Germany's most extensive UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. Its six Gothic church towers, each over a hundred metres tall, make for a skyline unlike anything else in the country: all vertical ambition and dark brick against the grey Baltic light.

Marzipan, the almond and sugar confection, may have been invented here during a medieval siege when only almonds and sugar remained in the city's stores, or it may have come from Persia, or Venice, depending on which food historian you follow.

What is certain is that Niederegger, on Breite Strasse since 1806, has made the most of the attribution, selling marzipan shaped into fruits, pigs, tools, and architectural models of the Holsten Gate. The gate itself, built between 1464 and 1478, appears on the old 50 Pfennig coin and is the most recognisable building in the city.