Amidst tourists and spires: Lübeck’s churches are the soul of the city

All too often, Lübeck is portrayed through the usual clichés: Lübeck, the old Hanseatic city with its Gängeviertel, the city of wealthy merchants for whom salted herring was the key to making their fortune, and whose red brick architecture has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.

Lübeck, the city of marzipan, the pearl of the Baltic Sea, the city of the Mann family’s literary dynasty. And, of course, Lübeck, the city of the seven towers: St Mary’s, St Peter’s, St James’s, St Aegidius’s and, finally, the Cathedral. No other churches symbolise the city’s history, its past and its future, quite like these five places of worship. Their bells toll for the next generation. It is a wake-up call, and everyone has taken it on board. Preserving the churches requires money. Fine words are not enough.

In sweltering 34-degree heat, tourists and Lübeck enthusiasts had set off on a special charity guided tour, the proceeds of which would go to the 7Türme+ Foundation. As we walked through the old town, it quickly became clear that Lübeck defies the fast pace of modern life. It’s good to have a place like this. As one of the tour guides put it: he’d left the city in 1970 – this run-down provincial backwater, as he put it – drawn to Hamburg and out into the wider world. He returned eleven years ago. He had found something that only those who see the towers piercing the clouds can understand: in summer, a picture-postcard scene; in winter, shrouded in mist and tinged with a touch of melancholy. What is a place to which one returns? Such a place is home. Like Lübeck, the city of the seven towers.