Hotels in Saarland

For everything from business trips to romantic breaks, Saarland is a great place to visit. With borders onto France and Luxembourg, Germany’s smallest state – if you don’t count city states like Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg – covers just 2,570 square km. It’s a beautiful destination, with leafy hills, historic towns and the romantic river Saar to explore. For about 250 years, huge steel plants and coal mines were a major feature of Saarland’s landscape. While most closed in the 1980s, the region has kept its industrial heritage alive, transforming former mines into must-visit museums, art galleries and cultural venues.

Whether you’re here on business in Saarland’s capital Saarbrucken, or just to cycle and hike around its natural attractions, great value rooms await in any of our Premier Inn Saarland hotels. 

To explore other German areas with a similar feel to Saarland, try North Rhine-Westphalia, home to important cities such as Düsseldorf and Cologne. Or there’s picturesque Hesse, the setting for many Brothers Grimm tales. Bavaria has a number of interesting towns and cities to explore, such as Munich, Nuremberg, Passau or Regensburg. And while you’re there, you can get the most out of your stay by booking into any of our stylish German Premier Inn hotels. 

Unspoilt countryside and high-quality hiking routes await you in Saarland, with many of its trails winning accolades such as Germany's Most Scenic Walk. But one of the best excuses to lace up your boots can be found in the Saarland district of Mettlach. It’s home to the Treetop Walk Saarschleife, a fully accessible 1.2 km-long trail which soars high above the forest canopy. There are cafes and restaurants so you can fuel up along the way, before seeing the most spectacular view of all - the river Saar forming a dramatic curve beneath you.

With its close proximity to France, Saarland has changed nationalities an incredible eight times during the past 200 years. So it’s no wonder that Saarland cuisine has been heavily influenced by French flavours. Although one of Germany’s smallest states, it has 12 Michelin stars, the highest percentage in Germany. Wherever you choose to eat, potatoes feature heavily on the menu and a popular dish is Dibbelabbes, a kind of potato souffle with bacon.

Saarland’s 2,000-year history goes back to Roman times, and it’s something you can experience for yourself at the Roman Villa Borg. Discovered in the 1800s and painstakingly excavated and reconstructed, this stately home is located near Saarland’s border with Luxembourg and attracts some 50,000 visitors a year. Admire the fully functioning Roman baths before heading to the in-house tavern where you can sample original Roman recipes, all served with home-grown herbs.

You’ll find Saarland in the south-west region of Germany, with the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate and the countries France and Luxembourg as its closest neighbours.

Locals generally speak either Rhine Franconian or Moselle Franconian. Standard German is widely spoken too, but the other main language is French. Today, a large part of the population is able to speak French fluently, and in January 2014 the Saarland state government announced its aim of making the region fully bilingual in German and French by 2043!

Once rich in coal deposits, Saarland is famous for its industrial heritage, something that can still be seen today. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Völkingen Ironworks is one of Saarland’s biggest attractions and a monument to the state’s heyday as an economic powerhouse. 

Saarland is a great place to visit with the family. Popular attractions include Saarbrücken Zoo, a former sandstone quarry that’s now home to more than 1,000 animals, as well as the Gondwana Prehistorium, a Schiffweiler museum which recreates the sights, sounds and smells of prehistory. Then there’s Naturwildpark Freisen, a wildlife park complete with reindeer, kangaroos and arctic foxes, and of course the Schlossberghöhlen, a subterranean network of 17th-century sand mines in Homburg.

There’s an international airport in Saarbrucken that’s just 15km from the city centre. But because it’s one of the smallest in Germany with just a limited number of scheduled flights, you’re more likely to fly into Frankfurt. By train, Saarland is well served by the Paris-Frankfurt high-speed route.

Small but charming Saarbrucken is the vibrant capital city with lots of history to discover. It has a picturesque setting on the curves of the river Saar, and plenty of Baroque architecture to admire.