Hannover is a town situated in the province of Lower Saxony in the Federal Republic of Germany. With about 600,000 inhabitants, it is one of the country's average-sized towns. The town was founded in Medieval times on the bank of the river Leine (the original name, Honovere, can be translated as 'high bank'). It was a small village of fishermen and ferrymen which became a relatively large town in the 13th Century. In the 14th Century, the main churches Kreuzkirche (Church of the Holy Cross) and Marktkirche (Church at the Market Square) were built, as well as a city wall with three town gates to ensure the security of the city.
In 1636, the Duke of Calenberg moved his residence to Hannover. His duchy afterwards became known as the Duchy of Hannover. Calenberg's descendants would later become Kings of England; the first of them, George I, ascended to the British throne in 1714. Three English kings were Electoral Princes of Hannover at the time. At the Congress of Vienna in 1814, King George III elevated the Electorate to Kingdom of Hannover. The capital town, Hannover, expanded considerably, reaching the western bank of the Leine.
In 1837, the personal union between the United Kingdom and Hannover ended as William IV's heir in the United Kingdom was female, while Hannover could be inherited only by males. It continued its existence as a kingdom until 1866, when it was annexed by the Prussian King. The people of Hannover opposed the Prussian annexation. Nevertheless, Hannover's growth continued until World War II, when two-thirds of the town was devastated. After the war, it was in the British zone of occupation, and later became famous for hosting commercial expositions such as the Hannover Fair and the CeBIT. In 2000, Hannover hosted the Expo 2000.
The town offers numerous historic sights, among which the most notable are the aforementioned Kreuzkirche and Marktkirche, the Old Town Hall, as well as the Aegidienkirche, built in the 14th Century and destroyed in 1943, today a memorial to victims of war and violence. Other central places in Hannover include Kroepcke Square, a favorite meeting place for young people, Market Square, the oldest square in town, and the modern Ballhof Square. After the town was almost completely destroyed in World War II, some remaining buildings, but mainly facades, examples of pre-war architecture, have been rebuilt and accumulated in what is now called The Old Town.
Well worth visiting is the Leineschloss Castle, former residence of the Hannoverian Kings. Built in the 12th Century as a Fransiscan monastery, it was abandoned in 1533 after the Protestant Reformation. In the early 17 Century, George Duke of Brunswick-Lueneburg chose it as his residence. During the Second World War, the Leineschloss burned to the ground as a result of British aerial bombings. The architect Dieter Oesterlen re-built it between 1957 and 1962, and now it is a seat of the Lower Saxon Landtag.
Of special interest to businessmen is the Hannover Fair. One of the biggest industrial fairs in the world, it is held each spring. The fair began in 1947, arranged by the British occupation government in order to test economic advancement in post-war Germany. Nowadays, the Hannover Fair centers around robotics, and about 6,000 exhibitors and 200,000 visitors attend it each year. In the 1980s, the growing information and telecommunications industries forced the organizers to split the fair, creating a separate fair for each of these sectors, the so-called CeBIT Expo. It is the biggest and most important computer expo in the world, and also takes place in the spring. A barometer for information technology and science, it welcomes 700,000 visitors annually.