A two-minute walk from the Rathaus brings you to the strangest street in Lüneburg — and arguably one of the most photogenic in northern Germany. Auf dem Meere runs downhill from St. Michaeliskirche to the Stintmarkt waterfront, and not a single house along it stands quite straight. Walls bow outward, doorways have settled into trapezoids, and the gables tilt at improbable angles. The whole thing looks vaguely like an Expressionist film set, but is the entirely accidental product of centuries of salt-mining subsidence beneath the foundations.
Walk slowly down it from the church. The cobbles are uneven and steeply sloped, and the small details — propped beams, wedges under thresholds, the faint grooves where rainwater has cut new channels through the stone — repay attention. At the bottom you come out at the Stintmarkt and the Ilmenau river. There is no commercial reason to be on this street; it has neither shops nor cafés. It exists, beautifully, just to be looked at.