Bad Doberan

Bad Doberan is a town in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany. It is the capital of the district Bad Doberan. Population: 12,300 (2001).

Bad Doberan may be called a suburb of Rostock, since it is situated only 15 km west of Rostock's city centre. The town is today a popular bathing resort, due to its district Heiligendamm, which is lying directly at the Baltic Sea.

The first settlers at the place were Cistercian monks, who founded a monastery in 1171. Doberan (how it was called at that time) remained a small village until 1793, when the duke of Mecklenburg founded the first German bathing resort, Heiligendamm. Since 1886 Doberan and Heiligendamm were connected by a narrow gauge railway called "Molli". The town is called Bad Doberan since 1921 ("Bad" means "spa").

The classicistic buildings characterizing the centre of Bad Doberan as well as Heiligendamm were all constructed between 1801 and 1836 by the architect Carl Theodor Severin. Anyway, the most famous building in Bad Doberan is the cathedral (Doberaner Münster, 1368), which once belonged to the monastery.