The federal state of Lower Saxony is located in the north-west of Germany. To the west it borders the Netherlands, and it also shares a frontier with other German states: North Rhine-Westphalia to the south-west, Hesse and Thuringia to the south, Saxony-Anhalt to the east, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to the north-east, and Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein to the north. The Free Hanseatic City of Bremen and the town of Bremerhaven, which together form the federal state of Bremen, are enclosed within Lower Saxony's boundaries.
