I visited Wismar and Stralsund during a two-week trip around northeastern Germany in October 2023. In both cities I stayed one and a half or two days to see its sights but also to soak in the atmosphere.
They are good cities for a world heritage traveler insofar as they have enough to offer to keep you entertained for a couple of days but they are also small enough that after those days you feel you have seen them decently enough.
Beside the highlights in both towns, it is a great pleasure to walk around the streets and watch out for remarkable buildings of which I generally like the old gabled merchants houses the best and both cities have a lot of those to offer. But when you walk the streets it is also rather painful how many wounds there are. How much was destroyed, mainly in WW2, but also how much was lost by neglect and lack of money and how much is still endangered despite the great renovation efforts since the reunification of Germany.
Wismar has several highlights that are not to miss:
Brick gothic was probably the biggest thrill on this trip and the St Nikolai church in Wismar may be the best of the churches in both towns. It is an impressive building and the second tallest brick gothic after the Marienkirche in Lübeck (the latter could easily a WHS site by itself). In addition, it features several remarkable art works: a medieval baptismal font made from bronze decorated by wonderful biblical scenes and surrounded by a mysterious grid, called the devils grid. In addition, there is a very large crucifixion groupe with a cross over and over decorated with big wine leaves, turning the cross in a tree of life and glory. This seems to be a local specialty since you find it also, and even larger, in the famous cathedral in Bad Doberan and in other churches as well. There is also a lovely Mary triptych in the Riemenschneider tradition, several (small) works by the great sculptor Ernst Barlach and wonderful gothic wall frescoes that recall Art Nouveau. The church of St. George is from the outside similarly impressive but very empty inside. There is a lot of work to be done here. Right next to it St. Mary’s tower with an impressive facade but not much to see inside. You should also not miss the Holy ghost church for its lovely painted barrack wooden ceiling.  Worth a visit is the city museum in the Schabbel house, for the beautiful building alone and the Welterbehaus. The famous fountain “Wasserkunst” and the wonderfully crooked “Gewölbe” building can only be seen from outside. Give at least a peak into the “Alte Schwede”, a great old merchant house turned into a restaurant. It gives a rare example of a preserved “Dielenhaus” which was the typical style for a merchant house in the region.  I tried to have dinner there but it was fully booked. What I found interesting in both towns (and beyond) were buildings from the 19thand 20th century that picked up on the traditional style like the Scholl high school from brick with clear gothic elements.
I did a short excursion from Wismar to Dorf Brandenburg, the small village that gave name to the whole province. It was seat of a Slavic lord and a gib earth castle. Now turned into a cemetery you can walk up the artificial hill and around it. There isn’t much left but the enormous amount of earth but it’s an interesting if though not very old piece of history. On the way is a very cute brick gothic church with a sumptuous baroque interior.
On the way to Stralsund, I visited Rostock. While here is (even) much more destroyed then in the inscribed towns its highpoints are not inferior: Above all the church of St. Mary with its sensational baptismal font even more impressive than the one in Wismar. Then, the interesting city hall with gothic and baroque parts and a beautiful Art nouveau part. There are several well-preserved old gable houses such as the Kerkhoff house or the building that houses now the bar Fachwerk7. In the eastern part on the old town, you find to old churches with well preserved medieval streets. In the west you find a park impressive remains of the city fortifications and the beautiful city museum in an old monastery. Rostock features several neogothic secular brick buildings: I like especially the Oberlandesgericht or courthouse. The house just northeast of it features a statue of St. George and reminds of the Kontorhaus district in Hamburg. The tower building on Lange Strasse 9 clearly quotes a gothic gable house while the great University building at Uinversitätsplatz is an interesting mix between brick architecture and classical Greek and Roman elements.
There are several great daytrips from Rostock: First certainly the cathedral of Bad Doberan, which was for a short time on the tentative list: In the church you find wonderful frescoes and woodwork, the oldest tryptic in the world (so they say!) and some to the strangest monumental tombs. Outside there is a well-preserved wall, a medieval bone house, several economic buildings. Charming is also the town square with several classicistic buildings and two pavilions à la chinois. One of them is now a nice restaurant. Not far from there is Heiligendamm the first German sea spa. An impressive visit insofar as it is a schizophrenic town: While large parts of the once splendid town are in a rotten state there is one luxury hotel that is as closed as Fort Knox. If you are not a guest you do not seem to be allowed to enter the fenced premises or eat in the restaurant. It seemed a bit like a security retreat from socialist times. This frustrating but memorable impression was soothed by a nice dinner in the art nouveau restaurant of the former train station where the again run steam trains but I couldn’t coordinate a ride with my schedule. Wonderful is a walk in the “Gespensterwald”, ghost wood. with wind shaped beech trees on top of a cliff line. Just north of Rostock is the popular port area of Warnemünde with old capitaine houses. And found it very touristy though and the famous modern building “Teepott” or tea pot was closed with seemingly stagnant building work.
Further east towards Stralsund is the nice small town of Riebnitz with an excellent amber museum (just the one piece of amber with a Gecko! in it is worth the trip) or the beautiful though touristy village of Ahrenshoop with its thatched roofs that was an important artists colony.
While you can see Wismar in a bit more than a day Stralsund definitely needs a least two days if you include the museums. The most iconic structure is certainly the town hall which seems closed to visitors. I am a bold intruder into world heritage buildings but I couldn’t find a way in. You can only visit the historic town hall passage with shops. Next to it the stands main church, very different from the Wismar churches, brightly painted and full of frescoes and artwork. It seems a bit overloaded but makes a fresher and more renovated impression then the other churches. There are wonderful wooden statues and wall frescoes and a strange wooden relief with bearded men in a forest chopping and hunting showing the trade connections of a certain guild into faraway Russia. Right behind it is a nice courtyard with the gothic “Lateinschule”.  Also a must is the church of St. Mary, also impressively large and high with original, though rather rough ceiling frescos. Also the St. Jacobs church is worth a visit and if only for the impressive exterior.
The Stralsund Museum is probably the most important museum in the two cities but it is closed for a large renovation project, so I had to miss out on that. I can still not decide if I should return to Stralsund on day to tick that off. So, the only historic museum open was the “Museumshaus” which shows how a historic house has several layers that the renovation today needs to consider. I am not sure it is worth the entrance fee but the attic with huge storage rooms on several floors is rather impressive. Watch out in the basement: The space is so low that you really need to stoop and crawl to see the entire room. Rather surprising that they even let you enter this room without warning or instructions but the staff did not seem highly motivated in general. Definite highpoints of Stralsund are also the monasteries: St. Catherine houses the city museum (now closed), the St. John houses the city archive and cute private house, including a holiday home. The monastery of the Holy Ghost actually never was a monastery but a communal hospital and almshouse. It is lovingly renovated and houses private homes.
While the harbor area in Wismar is included in the core zone that much more interesting harbor of Stralsund is not included though it seems very much a part of the old town. There are several old storage buildings, especially the group at the north end is     gorgeous and offers several nice restaurants. The neogothic Speicher 8 would be a jewel even in the Speicherstadt. There are several nice restaurants in historic buildings worth visiting in Stralsund: The Ratsherrn Braugasthaus, the cute Altes Zollhaus and above all the high-end hotel Zum Scheele. Like the “Alte Schwede” in Wismar it is in the high hall of an old merchant’s house. So, the atmosphere is great and the food good and a great deal for the quality. So, if you enjoy this kind of restaurant have lunch there or go for their wonderful breakfast that is also open to external guests upon reservation.
It is also worth to walk around the old town with the old fortifications now mostly turned into a lovely lake landscape with several historic bridges, all part of the core zone. A great example of neogothic public buildings is the “Schule am Sund” in the south or the almost Venetian building west of St. Mary’s church. But all the streets in the old city are worth exploring and offer an interesting mix of old crooked, splendid baroque and historistic buildings.
If you are not fed up with bricks the town of Greifswald is also worth a half day trip. The town offers another lovely old town, a famous old university and a beautiful historic museum that offers also pictures Caspar David Friedrich, that town’s greatest son. East of the town, reachable by bus, you can visit the most famous ruin of German romanticism, the Eldena monastery.
Both towns are certainly worth visiting but do they really need to be on the list? In general, I found their integrity lacking since quite a bit has been destroyed and lost, especially in Wismar. Some losses have been replaced by rather disappointing new houses. They mostly keep the proportions of the neighbouring buildings but fall far back in quality. If you compare them to Lübeck they have the advantage that they lack the few great architectural sins of the latter like the shopping malls in the very center. But compared to Lübeck they are not only much smaller but also more modest and they lack, perhaps apart from the town hall in Stralsund, real architectural icons of which Lübeck has several to offer that could be a WHS on their own. The argument that the represent another century of the Hanse is not obvious to the visitor since all this towns developed over many centuries and have a limited number of buildings left from their foundation period.
A comparison that also comes to mind immediately are the Flemish Hanse towns of Belgium and the Netherlands: Though their peak may have been a bit later their cityscapes are richer and better preserved then the to inscribed towns. If you compare Gent or Delft or Leiden to them you cannot wonder why they have never been nominated: They are incredibly well-preserved historic towns that are very much alive and the artistic level (especially since the Renaissance) is much higher which effects not only the decorations but also the architecture, showing their immense wealth. Some people may be glad for every European town that is not inscribed I think quality should be the prime argument and several Flemish uninscribed towns overshadow Stralsund and Wismar easily.