Königslutter has a cathedral that looks as if it belongs in Lombardy, and the reason is that the men who built it had been to Italy. The Kaiserdom, a great Romanesque church of pale stone begun in the 1130s, was founded by Emperor Lothar the Third, who is buried inside, and the craftsmen who carved its apse brought with them a style from the south. Round the outside runs a frieze of hunters chasing a stag, with hounds, a boar and an unlikely fox, and by the entrance sit a pair of lions with columns on their backs, one of them with a little man in its paws. They are some of the best medieval sculptures in northern Germany, set in a small Lower Saxon town that gets few crowds.
Behind the town rises the Elm, a long, low ridge of limestone covered in old beech forest. It is a geological curiosity, a fold of ancient seabed lifted above the plain and worn into hollows and caves, and it forms a nature park with an unusual amount of fossil-bearing rock. The beeches, some of them very large, hold deep shade in summer and glow copper in autumn.
The road climbing the Elm is a gentle surprise after the flat farmland to the north. It rises through woods in a series of easy bends, with clear sightlines and a fairly smooth surface, though leaf litter and the odd root-lifted patch call for attention. You will meet walkers and cyclists on sunny weekends, and the forestry trucks that take timber out use some of the roads. At the top you can find clearings with views over fields toward the Harz on a clear day, and the air feels a degree or two cooler than in the town.
The town has about sixteen thousand people, which means fuel stations, supermarkets and bakeries, and there are a few restaurants near the cathedral. Park near the church and walk. Allow time for the carvings in particular, because it is easy to ride past and not realise what you have missed. Early in the day, before the coach tours, the stone is warm in the low sun and the lions look almost alive.