Located on Germany's Baltic coast, Lübeck is close to the beach and has plenty more to offer than beer and bratwurst. It is a striking town steeped in history, literature and architecture and has been declared a world heritage site and the Baltic Sea has brought many different cultures to the city, redefining it as a colourful port that is full of surprises.

RADISSON SAS SENATOR
Willy-Brandt-Allee 6 (00 49 451 1420; fax: 142 2222; email: info.Luebeck@radissonSAS.com). This is the place to stay in Lübeck. It is central, faces the Altstadt and is very close to the Holstentor. Its rooms are white-walled, modern, light and spacious, most with views across the water and the staff are smiling and accommodating. Whats more, breakfast is phenomenally good. The building itself is an aberration, but by staying at the Radisson, your view of Lübeck need never be marred by it. ££

HOTEL KAISERHOF
Kronsforder Allee 1113 (00 49 451 703 301; fax: 795 083; email: service@kaiserhof-lubeck.de). Lübeck's grandest traditional hotel, converted from an elegant though uninspiring 19th-century residence. The snag is that it is some way from the city centre. £

Coastal Germany is the one part of the country where fish and vegetables take precedence over meat. The most prevalent and delicious local dish is cod (dorsch) in a mustard sauce, and fillets of plaice (scholle) with tiny brown Baltic shrimps. Herrings in many different guises fresh, grilled, pickled are widely available, too. Northern Germans are mad for asparagus (spargel), and if you are there in the spring, you'll find entire menus devoted to it: steamed with hollandaise, with potatoes, with ham, as soup. The pudding of choice is Rote Grütze, a compote of red fruits - currants, raspberries, morello cherries served with vanilla ice cream.

Naturally Lübeck boasts a good locally brewed beer. More surprisingly it also has its own very drinkable red wine, Rotspon, a legacy of its 14th-century wine trading days. The wine itself is French, mostly from Bordeaux, but it is aged in special oak casks kept in cellars under the Trave, which impart a mellow woodiness and give Lübeckers the right to call it their own. It is usually served by the carafe or glass, but is available by the bottle in some of the citys smarter restaurants. Here are a few of the more elegant places to try:

WULLENWEVER
Beckergrube 71 (00 49 451 704 333). Has a Michelin star.

SCHABBELHAUS
Mengstrasse 4850 (00 49 451 72011). Situated within an antique-filled, 16th-century merchant's house.

HISTORISCHER WEINKELLER
Koberg 8 (00 49 451 76234). Slightly less expensive, but every bit as elegant, the Historischer Weinkeller is set in the vaulted cellars of the Heiligen-Geist-Hospital. It has two cheaper sister restaurants next door, where the decor is rustic and the menu less ambitious.

RATSKELLER
Markt 13 (00 49 451 72044). Here you sit in discreet booths, with doors you can close for absolute privacy should you desire it, each decorated in homage to one of Lübeck's most glorious citizens.

SCHIFFERGESELLSCHAFT
Breite Strasse 2 (00 49 451 76776). The food isn't great stick to the simpler dishes of grilled fish or meat but the house itself, built as a sailors' canteen in the 16th century, is extraordinary and can have changed very little in 300 years (this may be what is wrong with the menu). Its great hall is furnished with four very long tables, each flanked by settles with elaborately carved ends. And from the lofty coffered ceiling hang ancient models of ships, and vast brass chandeliers holding real candles that are the room's principal light source.

PROMENADENTREFF
On the Strandpromenade, Travemünde (00 49 4502 74161). The Promenadentreff has a large terrace overlooking the beach and an impressive number of herring salads (salted and pickled) on its menu.

NIEDEREGGER
Breite Strasse 89, (00 49 451 53010). There are plenty of cafès in both Lübeck and Travemünde, but once you have tried Niederegger, there's not much inclination to venture elsewhere. The cafè conforms to the clichè of Mittel European kaffee-und-küche palaces, and the coffees, especially the flavoured varieties, are excellent. Established in 1806, this is also the place that invented marzipan, but the succulent, scented almond confections on sale here bear no relation at all to the English version. Niederegger marzipan is sold not just in blocks, chocolates and replicas of every imaginable animal or fruit, but moulded into elaborate models of the city itself. Appropriately, there is a museum of marzipan on the second floor.

EIS-CAFE VENEZIA
Königstrasse 64. There is good ice cream (including an extravagant marzipan sundae) to be had at the Eis-Cafè Venezia, an ice-cream parlour stuck in a 1950s time warp. Closed during the winter.

TRAVEMÜNDE
Travemünde is a seaside resort 20km up the River Trave. It's a pleasant place for a day out: the beach is expansive and sandy, covered in summer with strandkorb literally beach baskets, but in reality more like two-seated wicker sofas. Available to rent by the day, the brightly-coloured, well-padded chairs have a hood to keep the wind off, pull-out footrests and ledges on which to put your drink. There's a promenade lined with cafès and restaurants, an elegant 19th-century kursaal (spa) and casino, and some fine belle èpoque beach houses. If you continue north beyond the prom you reach some cliffs, one of the few places on this coast where you can look down and behold the Baltic. The path takes you through coppices of poplar, carpeted in wild strawberries, with open country on one side and the sea on the other, but if the weather is fine, it's unlikely to be secluded.

Travemünde can be reached by train, bus or boat. The boat leaves from the An der Untertrave quay and takes an hour and 20 minutes. Take it in one direction only, though, as the journey is more than twice as long as the bus.

The obvious way to explore Lübeck is on foot. It is made up of narrow, closely packed houses, each about six storeys' tall, with steep roofs, stepped gables and fancy striped brickwork that alternates courses of unglazed-red and glazed-black bricks. Its eclectic mixture of medieval and baroque architecture, punctuated by the seven soaring spires of its grandiose 13th- and 14th-century churches, survived intact until Palm Sunday 1942, when an Allied bombing raid, perhaps mistaking the spires for cranes, bombed the churches rather than the docks. Both the cathedral (or dom) and the extraordinarily lovely Marienkirche, the church that really dominates the skyline, have exhibitions recording the damage.

ALSTADT
The Old Town, or the Alstadt, is surrounded by water on all sides. It has UNESCO World Heritage status and is a beautiful area to visit. It occupies what is essentially a small island and it is easy to find your way around because you're never very far from a canal or the river. The prettiest streets are in the south-western corner of the island, inland from the quay called An der Obertrave, and on the eastern side around Glockengiesserstrasse, where you'll find enchanting courtyards of still-lived-in, pink-painted almshouses built in the early 1600s for the widows of sailors, merchants (the Füchtingshof at number 23) and craftsmen (the Glandorpsgang at number 39).

PETRIKIRCHE
For a splendid view of the city, take a lift up the tower in the Petrikirche. The deconsecrated church, now used for exhibitions, concerts, and even raves, is a magical space: a vast airy volume, broken only by its supporting columns.

MARIENKIRCHE
One sight which should not be missed is the Marienkirche, both for its art (look behind the altar for the extraordinary stone-carved panel depicting the Last Supper, at which Jesus and his disciples, some the worse for drink, appear improbably to have polished off a suckling pig) and its atmosphere as a place of safety and contemplation. The most affecting monument in the Marienkirche is the Marientidenkapelle, or chapel of memory, dedicated to the struggle against tyranny and war: it contains the church bells, one cast in 1508, which lie smashed on the shattered stone floor exactly where they fell on the night it was bombed.

BUDDENBROOKHAUS
4 Mengstrasse (00 49 451 122 4192; fax: 122 4140; www.buddenbrookhaus.de). Buddenbrookhaus is the ornate Baroque mansion, built in 1758, where the novelists Thomas and Heinrich Mann grew up. Thomas Mann is Lübeck's most famous son and there is much in the city that is dedicated to him. Today it is a memorial museum to the Mann brothers and takes its name from Thomas' first novel, Buddenbrooks.

DRÄGERHAUS AND THE BEHNHAUS
The Drägerhaus and the Behnhaus, next door to each other at 9 and 11 Königstrasse, are two houses which used to belong to Lübeck's wealthy merchants and which have been preserved as museums. Lübeckers were taxed according to the street frontage of their houses, so they tended to build them narrow. However their modest exteriors don't remotely reflect either the size or the opulence of their interiors. The Drägerhaus has been preserved as a patrician home: Biedermeier furniture, wonderful trompe l'oeil wall painting and a collection of domestic decorative arts; while the Behnhaus has been modernised as an art gallery, rather too full of the work of mediocre local artists, but worth a look for its Caspar David Friedrich, its Kokoshka of one of Lübeck's churches, the Jakobikirche on the staircase, and especially its four paintings by Munch: a revealingly bleak self-portrait, and the portrait of the sons of Dr Linde, Munch's friend and physician whom he would visit in Lübeck, and the first person to recognise his genius. Unexpectedly, there is also a painting by Don van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart).

AIRPORT
Hamburg Fuhlsbüttel (www.airport.de/index.phtml) is the city's international airport

AIRLINES FROM THE UK
Ryanair (0541 569569; fax: 580588; www.ryanair.com) flies direct from Stansted to Lübeck. Alternatively, you can fly to Hamburg with British Airways (0845 779 9977; www.british-airways.com), Lufthansa (0845 773 7747; www.lufthansa.co.uk) or KLM (0870 507 4074; www.klmuk.com) - and catch a train to the city, which takes about 40 minutes.

Winters along the Baltic coast can be very severe and the weather is variable throughout the year. Head for the beaches in the summer.

The Lübeck & Travemünde Tourist Office (00 49 4511 221 909) is at Beckergrube 95. Also visit the German National Tourist Board website at www.deutschland-tourismus.de.

Always consult the Foreign Office before travelling.