Hanover or Hannover is the capital of and largest city in the state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,061 (2017) inhabitants make it the thirteenth-largest city in Germany as well as the third-largest city in Northern Germany after Hamburg and Bremen. The city lies at the confluence of the River Leine and its tributary Ihme, in the south of the North German Plain, and is the largest city in the Hannover–Braunschweig–Göttingen–Wolfsburg Metropolitan Region. It is the fifth-largest city in the Low German dialect area after Hamburg, Dortmund, Essen and Bremen.