Am Steintor

Am Steintor is a pedestrian zone in Hanover's Mitte district, right on the edge of the city centre. The city laid it out in the 1950s, close to where the Steintor gate once stood in the medieval fortifications. That gate, first recorded in 1314, came down in the early eighteenth century. From 1780 onward, new buildings gradually covered the old walls, and the squares that replaced the gates kept their historical names.

Today the square covers about 3,000 square metres. After dark, clubs, discos and pubs draw crowds to a red-light district nearby. In summer, large beach volleyball events fill what people jokingly call Hanover's largest sandbox. On the eastern side stands the Steintorblock, a two-storey building from 1954 that holds various shops. At the north-eastern edge you meet Carl Dopmeyer's bronze Gänseliesel of 1898, a girl tending geese. It recalls the days when geese grazed here, the Goseriede of Low German. The Goseriedebad next door, once a public bath with separate sections for men and women, now houses the Kestnergesellschaft art association. Its former men's section is home to radio ffn.

The Anzeiger-Hochhaus of 1928, built in the Brick Expressionism style, keeps the Hochhaus-Lichtspiele, Germany's highest cinema, under its dome. The tram stop on Kurt-Schumacher-Straße features shelters that Alessandro Mendini designed for the BUSSTOPS art project. Trams also stop at a barrier-free high platform on Münzstraße. Beneath the square, the U-Bahn station on the C-line runs on just two tracks, although several lines branch there. One level further down lies a partially built platform, a relic of a fourth tunnel that was never completed.