The first signs of human presence in the area of Lüneburg date back to the time of Neanderthal Man: 56 axes, estimated at 150,000 years old, were uncovered during the construction in the 1990s of the autobahn between Ochtmissen and Bardowick.

The first indication of a permanent, settled farming culture in the area was found not far from the site of the Neanderthal discovery in the river Ilmenau between Lüne and Bardowick.

[5] An older reference to the place in the Royal Frankish Annals for 795 states:ad fluvium Albim pervenit ad locum, qui dicitur Hliuni, i.e. "on the river Elbe, at the location, which is called Hliuni") and refers to one of the three core settlements of Lüneburg; probably the castle on the Kalkberg which was the seat of the Billunger nobles from 951.

According to tradition, the salt was first discovered by a hunter who observed a wild boar bathing in a pool of water, shot and killed it, and hung the coat up to dry.

The Polabian name for Lüneburg is Glain (written as Chlein or Glein in older German sources), probably derived from glaino (Slavonic: glina) which means "clay".

The League was formed in 1158 in Lübeck, initially as a union of individual merchants, but in 1356 it met as a federation of trading towns at the first general meeting of the Hansetag.

Lüneburg's salt was needed in order to pickle the herring caught in the Baltic Sea and the waters around Norway so that it could be preserved for food inland during periods of fasting when fish (not meat) was permitted.

In 1371, in the wake of the Lüneburg War of Succession, rebel citizens threw the princes out of the town and destroyed their royal castle on the Kalkberg along with the nearby monastery.

With the demise of the Hanseatic League – and the absence of herrings around 1560 around Falsterbo in Scania – the biggest customers of Lüneburg's salt broke away and the town rapidly became impoverished.

Hardly any new houses were built in central Lüneburg after this time, which is why the historical appearance of the town centre has remained almost unchanged until the present day.

After the Nazi anti-Jewish pogroms known as Kristallnacht in the night of November 9, 1938, the city ordered the Lüneburg Synagogue to be torn down at the costs of the local Jewish community.

During the bombing of Lüneburg, the town was attacked 19 times between 1940 and 1945 but miraculously survived without major damage to its city center, unlike nearby Hamburg.

Furthermore, the terminus of the Lüneburg-Bleckede railway line, the marshalling yard, a dairy on Lüner Weg and a factory in the Am Schwalbenberg street were severely damaged.

The target was once more the railway station and its surroundings, where a train with 400 prisoners from the Alter Banter Weg satellite camp near Wilhelmshaven, who were to be taken to Neuengamme, was parked.

On 23 May 1945, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler took his own life in Lüneburg whilst in British Army custody by biting into a potassium cyanide capsule embedded in his teeth before he could be properly interrogated.

The university grew out of the new economics and cultural studies departments set up in the 1980s and their amalgamation with the College of Education (Pädagogischen Hochschule or PH) that took place in 1989.

To the south of the town stretches the 7,400-square-kilometre (2,857 sq mi) Lüneburg Heath which emerged as a result of widespread tree-felling, forest fires and grazing.

The tradition that the heath arose from centuries of logging undertaken to meet the constant need of the Lüneburg salt works for wood is not historically confirmed.

Jüttkenmoor, Klosterkamp, Bülows Kamp, In den Kämpen, Krähornsberg, Schäferfeld, Volgershall and Zeltberg are the names of individual blocks within a single Stadtteil.

As a result of the increasing quantities of salt mined with improved technical equipment after 1830, the ground began to sink by several metres.

The land has not quite stopped subsiding yet, but it is stable enough that new construction has taken place on it, and several historic buildings which had previously been damaged or demolished have been restored.

Shortly after the Second World War, refugees and displaced persons from Germany's eastern territories brought an increase in population within just a few months of around 18,000 people so that the total number in December 1945 was 53,000.

They include the fashion company Roy Robson, DeVauGe Gesundkostwerk one of the largest German manufacturers of vegetarian food and the dairy, which today is part of Hochwald Nahrungsmittel-Werke and makes products, e.g., yoghurt, under the Lünebest label.

In the industrial field there are large local firms like the car interior manufacturers, Johnson Controls, H. B. Fuller, Impreglon and the electronics company of Sieb & Meyer.

Since 1996, as a result of the reform of the local constitution, both functions (again) have been combined in the post of a full-time lord mayor, who is now directly elected by the townsfolk.

In addition the demolition of ramshackle buildings in the 1950s and 1960s and the construction of shops with a contemporary design broke up the historic appearance of many rows of houses.

The restoration process revealed hitherto hidden ceiling frescos, medieval pottery workshops and many historic soakaways (Sickergruben) from which a considerably better picture of life in the Middle Ages resulted.

In the Lüneburg Stadtteil of Kaltenmoor is St. Stephen's (St. Stephanus), the oldest ecumenical building in the town, with Protestant and Catholic churches under one roof.

Other buildings worthy of mention are the three remaining town churches: St. Johannis am Sande (completed 1370), St. Michaelis where Johann Sebastian Bach was a choirboy from 1700 to 1702, and the relatively 'modern' St. Nicolai which was built in 1407.

In the area of the old port can still be seen the Baroque façade of the "Old Store" (Altes Kaufhaus), most of the rest of which was burned down and had to be replaced by one that was more suitable for a fire station.