Overseas port of Rostock Rostock has one of the largest ports on the German Baltic Sea coast. Its trademark is its universality. In the Middle Ages, the port on the Warnow was one of the most important transshipment points on the Baltic Sea. A proud fleet with the Rostock griffin on the bow was the mediator of trade with Scandinavia, the Baltic States, western and southern Europe. Centuries of ups and downs followed the heyday of the Hanseatic League. At the end of the 19th century and in the decades that followed, Rostock and its city port lost touch with the rapidly growing German economy. Until 1945, Rostock's port was only of local importance, and even that was lost as a result of the war. In the post-war years it was repaired. The growth of the GDR economy and the construction of a large state merchant fleet required the construction of a new, efficient deep sea port, which was put into operation in 1960. Constantly expanded and adapted to the needs of the GDR economy, the overseas port achieved its highest result in 1989 with over twenty million tons of handling - mainly bulk goods. In the past 18 years, the port has fundamentally changed its appearance and range of services. With a modern oil port, with facilities for handling grain, coal, fertilizer and cement, with terminals for handling building materials and general cargo, it is still a universal transhipment point. Its heart, however, became the ferry port with the adjoining terminals for combined freight traffic, for paper and RoRo traffic. Since the beginning of the 1990s, there has been an outstanding increase in handling. Rostock's favorable geographical location in terms of transport, good accessibility by land and sea, and enormous investments in infrastructure have made the port on the Warnow one of the most important German Baltic Sea ports. In passenger traffic between Scandinavia, Finland, Russia, the Baltic States and Germany, Rostock has been number one for years. Like ferry traffic, cruise shipping began at a very low level after 1990. Today Rostock's cruise port Warnemünde is one of the most popular German ports for the giants of the sea. Hundreds of thousands of tourists, mainly from overseas, get to know Germany's capital Berlin and the beauties of the coastal region of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania from here. Source: rostock.de