The Holstentor is the most photographed thing in Lübeck and the one image that flashes through anyone's mind when the city's name is spoken. The two squat round brick towers with their conical roofs flank a defensive gateway built in 1478, the only one of four medieval gates on the western side of the Altstadt to survive.
The interior houses the Museum Holstentor, a small but well-laid-out display covering the history of the Hanseatic League and life in medieval Lübeck. Models of merchant cogs, copies of trading documents, and reproductions of the medieval city give context to what you are about to see in the Altstadt. The towers genuinely lean inward as the marshy ground beneath has subsided over five centuries.