Atlas Trail
Ten Cities from the Harz Foothills to the Baltic Shore in Order of Founding
These ten cities of northern Germany and Poland are told in order of founding year, from 861 to 1255. The path runs from the Harz foothills and the Lower Saxony plain to the Baltic coast, and shows how a medieval trading and ruling network spread north and east.
Stop 1 of 10.
Cities
Braunschweig, also called Brunswick, sits at the farthest navigable point of the river Oker, north of the Harz Mountains. It was founded in 861, the earliest of the ten, and had a 2025 population of 255,500 in a region of 1.02 million.
Stop 2 of 10.
Cities
Luneburg was first mentioned in a charter dated 13 August 956. It prospered as a Hanseatic League member on its salt, which preserved Baltic herring, and became a free imperial city in 1392.
Stop 3 of 10.
Cities
Goslar was first mentioned in a 979 deed issued by Emperor Otto II. Its Old Town and the nearby Mines of Rammelsberg are UNESCO World Heritage Sites for their millennium of ore mining and their importance to the Holy Roman Empire and the Hanseatic League.
Stop 4 of 10.
Cities
Stade first appears in writing in 994, from a Viking raid, when it was called Stethu. It joined the Hanseatic League in 1267, and the moat around its old town remains from the Swedish rebuilding of 1648 to 1712.
Stop 5 of 10.
Cities
Greifswald dates its founding to 1199, when Cistercian monks established Eldena Abbey. It received Lubeck town law in 1250 and its university in 1456, among the oldest in Europe.
Stop 6 of 10.
Cities
Torun lies on the Vistula. The Teutonic Knights expanded it in 1233, and it is the birthplace of Nicolaus Copernicus, born there in 1473. Its medieval Old Town became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.
Stop 7 of 10.
Cities
Stralsund was granted city rights in 1234, the oldest in the historic region of Pomerania. It flourished in the Hanseatic League, and its old town was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site jointly with Wismar in 2002.
Stop 8 of 10.
Cities
Elblag was founded in 1237 and was a Hanseatic League member. It joined Poland in 1454, became one of the country's chief ports, and is home to the Elblag Canal, one of the Seven Wonders of Poland.
Stop 9 of 10.
Cities
Kiel was founded in 1242 and is now the capital of Schleswig-Holstein and Germany's largest city on the Baltic Sea. The Kiel Canal, which links the Baltic to the North Sea, has a terminus in its Holtenau district.
Stop 10 of 10.
Cities
Konigsberg was established in 1255 by the Teutonic Knights and later became the Prussian coronation city and home of Immanuel Kant. Soviet forces occupied it in 1945, and it was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946, which closes the path with the latest founding year, 1255.
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