Pelikan Tintenturm

Pelikan's history in Hannover runs back to 1838, when Carl Hornemann's color and ink works in the city's Hainholz district grew into the company that, under Günther Wagner, patented the piston-filling mechanism and launched the green-marbled Model 100 in 1929 — the pen that made the ink-window piston filler the house's defining feature. Production later moved roughly 30 kilometers east to Peine-Voehrum in 1973, but Hannover stayed the brand's home ground and its historic factory site, at Pelikanplatz 21, is where the company now runs the Tintenturm: a combined factory shop and company museum.

The Tintenturm's shop functions as a genuine factory outlet — customers can test pens before buying, get nib exchanges, engraving, and cleaning done on the spot, and browse Pelikan's current writing-instrument range at factory pricing. Above the shop floor, a historic ceremonial hall built in 1913 by architect Karl Siebrecht, with stained glass by modernist Adolf Richard Hölzel, hosts rotating exhibitions on the company's nearly 190-year history, plus guided 90-minute tours through the building and its archive.

It is not an independent boutique but the manufacturer's own retail and heritage site — the closest thing Pelikan has to a flagship — and the only place to buy the pens, test the nibs, and see the company museum in the same building where the brand's own story began.