"White town by the sea" is a sobriquet applied to Heiligendamm. Founded in 1793, it's the oldest seaside resort in Germany, perhaps on the continent. The 19th-century dukes of Mecklenburg came to Heiligendamm for seaside health cures. In 2007, heads of state and government from the major industrialized countries met in Heiligendamm for the G8 summit.

Four years after Heiligendamm's founding, Germany's first North-Sea resort opened on the island of Norderney. In the 1830s, it became a summer retreat for the king and crown prince of Hanover, making it a favorite destination for the aristocracy and upper-class society. These days, Norderney isn't quite as posh - it's more the family-type of place.

In the early 20th century, artists began to converge on this resort during summer, drawn by the solitude of the tranquil Baltic Sea island of Hiddensee. Among them were such names as Käthe Kollwitz, Joachim Ringelnatz, Asta Nielsen and Gerhart Hauptmann. Rügen's little neighbor has preserved its tranquility to this day: automobiles are banned from the island.

Germany's eastern-most seaside resort, Ahlbeck, on the island of Usedom, is famous for its pier. It was built in 1899 in the famous resort architecture style and survives today as Germany's oldest pier. Many of the buildings date to the 1870s and '80s and incorporate elements of classicism, Gothic Revival, art nouveau and neo-Baroque.

Heringsdorf is also on Usedom, right next door to Ahlbeck. Its pier is not the oldest in Germany but the longest, reaching a spectacular 508 meters out into the Baltic. It's also home to Germany's first wicker beach chair manufacturer. They've been making beach chairs by hand since 1925 to where their wickerwork now peppers Germany's coasts end to end.

As a major port on the Baltic, Travemünde began receiving a steady flow of guests arriving from Copenhagen, Riga and Saint Petersburg in the 19th century. Fyodor Dostoyevsky is said to have gambled in its casino, and Franz Kafka shocked other guests by strolling barefoot along its beaches. Today, the shallow waters off the beach make this resort especially popular with families.

The spa on the North Sea coast is known for its huts on stilts and long and broad sandy beach. Perched as high as eight meters above the seabed, the giftbuden houses lifeguard stations, pubs and restaurants. Saint Peter-Ording is Germany's only sulphur spring spa on the coast.

With its collection of elegant seaside villas nestled in the forests atop the steep coast, Sellin may well be the most beautiful of the five resorts on the Baltic Sea island of Rügen. The Sellin Bay shelters the beaches from the wind. At the tip of the Sellin pier is a diving gondola which takes visitors underwater to enjoy a fish-eye view of the Baltic.

The North Sea resort of Kampen on the island of Sylt first came into its own during the 1920s. But the medical aspect of the cures quickly took a back seat to the function of seeing and being seen. In the 1960s, Sylt with its white sand beaches and eerily beautiful dunes began to attract the international jet set. Kampen has retained its status as an exclusive holiday resort.

Kühlungsborn not only boasts the resort architecture typical of the Baltic Sea coast but the added attraction of a historical narrow-gauge steam train connecting it with Heiligendamm and Bad Doberan. Molli, the resort railway, has been serving the line for over 100 years.