With the exception of Schwerin, Güstrow and Neubrandenburg, the important towns are situated on the Baltic coast – old Hanseatic towns originally characterized by their red brick architecture: Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund and Greifswald. They are all small. Only Rostock has a population of almost 200,000. The state capital, Schwerin, is situated 40 kilometres from the sea and about the same distance from Lübeck in Schleswig-Holstein. It is like a miniature version of the whole state.

In 2003 the population was 98,000. The castle lies at the heart of the city, on a tiny island, but it is not of any architectural significance. Nevertheless, with its 365 gables and towers, the former seat of the dukes of Mecklenburg looks exactly like a child’s idea of a real castle: big and splendid, even enchanting.

But “the fairest of them all” is definitely the landscape, even though it’s worth taking a break from nature to climb to the cathedral tower in Schwerin, watch the big ships leaving port in Rostock-Warnemünde or walk around Stralsund’s medieval old town, which is still surrounded by a wall. One of the state’s celebrities, Germany’s greatest Romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), painted innumerable portraits of this landscape and in his way made it known throughout the world with such pictures as “Chalk Cliffs on Rügen” and “Sea of Ice”.