The largest and capital city of the German state of Lower Saxony is Hannover. With 535,932 inhabitants as of 2021, it is 13th in size among German cities and ranks fourth in the northern region, behind Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen. The municipalities of Garbsen, Langenhagen, and Laatzen make up Hanover’s urban area, which is home to over 791,000 people as of 2018.[3] With 1.16 million residents as of 2019[4], the Hanover Region is the largest of the Hanover–Braunschweig–Göttingen–Wolfsburg Metropolitan Region, which ranks 17th in the EU in terms of GDP.