Stade

Stade is the Hanseatic town in the orchard. It sits at the edge of the Altes Land, the largest contiguous fruit-growing region in Central Europe — millions of apple and cherry trees on the Elbe marshes, a sea of blossom every spring — and its own heart is a perfectly composed harbour scene: the Hansehafen basin ringed by gabled merchant houses, the wooden treadwheel crane on the quay, the baroque Bürgermeister-Hintze-Haus admiring its reflection. Fire in 1659 and the centuries since left an old town of unusual completeness, best surveyed from the water on a punt.

History gave Stade a Swedish century: after the Thirty Years' War the town served as capital of Sweden's German duchies, and the Schwedenspeicher — the massive Swedish provisions warehouse of the 1690s — now houses the regional museum, Bronze Age gold and Hanseatic trade under one roof.

The town's deepest voice is its organs. St Cosmae holds the instrument on which the North German organ school spoke: built by Berendt Hus and completed with his young nephew Arp Schnitger — the greatest organ builder of the Baroque, learning his art here — it accompanied the tenure of Vincent Lübeck, whose virtuosity made Stade famous among musicians; St Wilhadi answers with a great Erasmus Bielfeldt organ. Recitals and an organ academy keep the pipes in daily eloquence: apples, gables and fugues, ripening together on the Elbe.