River Elbe in the context of "Upper Sorbian"

Hamburg, officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, is the second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and seventh-largest city in the European Union, with a population of over 1.9 million. The Hamburg Metropolitan Region has a population of over 5.1 million and is the tenth-largest metropolitan region by GDP in the European Union.

At the southern tip of the Jutland Peninsula, Hamburg stands on the branching River Elbe at the head of a 110 km (68 mi) estuary to the North Sea, at the confluence of the Alster and Bille. Hamburg is one of Germany's three city-states alongside Berlin and Bremen, and is surrounded by Schleswig-Holstein to the north and Lower Saxony to the south. The Port of Hamburg is Germany's largest and Europe's third-largest, after Rotterdam and Antwerp. The local dialect is a variant of Low Saxon.

Dresden (/ˈdrɛzdən/; German: [ˈdʁeːsdn̩] ; Upper Saxon: Dräsdn; Upper Sorbian: Drježdźany, pronounced [ˈdʁʲɛʒdʒanɨ]) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth largest by area (after Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne), and the third-most populous city in the area of former East Germany, after Berlin and Leipzig. Dresden's urban area comprises the towns of Freital, Pirna, Radebeul, Meissen, Coswig, Radeberg, and Heidenau and has around 790,000 inhabitants. The Dresden metropolitan area has over 1.3 million inhabitants.

Dresden is the second largest city on the River Elbe after Hamburg. Most of the city's population lives in the Elbe Valley, but a large, albeit very sparsely populated, area of the city east of the Elbe lies in the West Lusatian Hill Country and Uplands (the westernmost part of the Sudetes) and thus in Lusatia. Many boroughs west of the Elbe lie in the Ore Mountain Foreland, as well as in the valleys of the rivers rising there and flowing through Dresden, the longest of which are the Weißeritz and the Lockwitzbach. The name of the city as well as the names of most of its boroughs and rivers are of Sorbian origin.

Wittenberg, officially Lutherstadt Wittenberg, is the fourth-largest town in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is situated on the River Elbe, 60 kilometers (37 mi) north of Leipzig and 90 kilometers (56 mi) south-west of the reunified German federal capital city of Berlin, and has a population of 46,008 (2018).

Wittenberg has close connections with Martin Luther (1483–1546) and the 16th century religious / theological movement of Protestantism begun here in the Reformation, and the large branch of Western Christianity started here of Evangelical Lutheranism, for which it received the honorific title Lutherstadt and has been called the "cradle of the Reformation" and "cradle of Protestantism". Several of Wittenberg's buildings are associated with the historical / religious events, including a preserved part of the Augustinian monastery of the local community of the world-wide Roman Catholic Order of St. Augustine in which Luther lived, first as a celibate monk and later as property owner with his later wife Katharina von Bora (c. 1499 – 1552), and family. Wittenberg was also the seat of the prince Elector of Saxony, a dignity held by the dukes of the Duchy of Saxe-Wittenberg, making it one of the most powerful cities in the thousand-years-old Holy Roman Empire (A.D. c.800 / 962–1806) in Central Europe.

Heligoland (/ˈhɛlɪɡoʊlænd/; German: Helgoland, pronounced [ˈhɛlɡoˌlant] ; Heligolandic Frisian: deät Lun, lit. 'the Land', Mooring Frisian: Hålilönj, Danish: Helgoland) is a small archipelago in the North Sea, administratively part of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. The islands are located in the Heligoland Bight (part of the German Bight) in the southeastern corner of the North Sea and are the only German islands not in the vicinity of the mainland: they lie approximately 69 kilometres (37+1⁄2 nautical miles) by sea from Cuxhaven at the mouth of the River Elbe.

The islands were historically possessions of Denmark, then became possessions of Great Britain from 1807 to 1890. Since 1890, they have been part of Germany, although after World War II they along with the rest of Schleswig-Holstein were administered by the United Kingdom as part of the British occupation zone in Germany. British control of Heligoland lasted until 1952, when it was turned over to the control of West Germany.

Barbaricum (from the Greek: Βαρβαρικόν, "foreign", "barbarian") is a geographical name used by historical and archaeological experts to refer to the vast area of barbarian-occupied territory that lay, in Roman times, beyond the frontiers or limes of the Roman Empire in North, Central and South Eastern Europe, the "lands lying beyond Roman administrative control but nonetheless a part of the Roman world". During the Late Antiquity, it was the Latin name for those tribal territories not occupied by Rome that lay beyond the Rhine and the Danube (but not for Persia): Ammianus Marcellinus used it, as did Eutropius. The earliest recorded mention appears to date to the early 3rd century.

In research literature, the terms 'Germania', actually Magna Germania, and 'Barbaricum' are sometimes used interchangeably, but they are not entirely identical in the chronological or the geographical senses. The extra-Roman area described as Barbaricum was, from the beginning of the Migration Period, not exclusively inhabited by Germani, even though they represented the majority of the population until the time of Late Antiquity. In the Migration Period, Alans and Huns also pushed forward into this area before and, later (from the 6th century), Slavic tribes populated the area east of the Albis (River Elbe) that the Germani had largely abandoned.

The Leipzig Bay(German: Leipziger Tieflandsbucht) or Leipzig Basin or Saxon Lowland or Saxon Bay is a very flat, originally lakeless and highly fertile plain in Central Germany, in northwestern Saxony and southeastern Saxony-Anhalt, anchored by the foothills of the Harz mountains in the northwest and of the Ore Mountains in the southeast.

This region was originally covered with dense forests and meandering rivers. In the course of urbanization and lignite open pit mining, large areas were deforested and many rivers and streams canalised or diverted. The Leipzig Bay is bounded to the north by the Düben Heath, to the east by the River Elbe, to the south by the Ore Mountain Foreland and the Central Saxon Hills, and by the River Saale to the west. The conurbation formed by the two cities of Leipzig and Halle lies in the centre of the Leipzig Bay. Other important towns are Delitzsch, Eilenburg, Merseburg and Borna.

Meissen Cathedral or the Church of St John and St Donatus (German: Meißner Dom) is a Gothic church in Meissen in Saxony. It is situated on the castle hill of Meissen, adjacent to the Albrechtsburg castle and forms a critical centrepiece of the iconic Meissen skyline overlooking the River Elbe in the valley below.

The German Timber-Frame Road (German: Deutsche Fachwerkstraße) is a German tourist route leading from the river Elbe in the north to the Black Forest and Lake Constance in the south. Numerous cities and towns each with examples of the vernacular timber-framed houses traditional to the German states are situated along the road. The total length of the route is nearly 3,000 km (1,864 mi).

The route is divided into seven sections, each of which follow the traditional areas of: Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Hesse, Bavaria, and Baden-Württemberg.