the largest and most important town in the grand duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, on the left bank of the Warnow, about 9 miles above its mouth in the Baltic, 131 miles W. by N. of Hamburg; N. Lat. 54° 5', E. Long. 12° 20'. It stands on a hill, and is surrounded by ancient walls and ditches, which form a very agreeable public walk. Besides the suburbs outside the walls, Rostock is divided into an old, a middle, and a new town, and has in general an antique and picturesque appearance, somewhat like that of Lübeck. The old town is the most irregular, and the middle town the handsomest portion. The principal square bears the name of Blücher, and contains a statue in brass of that hero, who was a native of the town. The church of St Mary, a Gothic building, contains a monument to the celebrated Grotius, who died here in 1645; and another in memory of the Mecklenburg soldiers, who fell in the campaign of 1812 against Russia. The church of St Peter has a tower 420 feet high, which is visible to navigators about 20 miles off the coast. Another notable edifice is the singular-looking town-hall, with its seven pinnacles. The university of Rostock, founded in 1419, is the national one of the duchy, and had in 1856, 32 professors and teachers, and 97 students, some of the former men of much celebrity. Attached to the university are a library of 80,000 volumes, a museum, an observatory, and various preparatory seminaries. Rostock has also a ducal palace, theatre, nunnery, &c. The manufactures of the town are many and various, as there are cotton factories, a paper-mill, a sugar-house, ship-building yards, &c.; and the trade and navigation are of the greatest importance. Warnemünde, on the Baltic, is the harbour of the town, and it admits vessels drawing 8 feet of water. Communication is kept up by steamers; and the place, though but a small village, is much frequented in summer for the sake of the sea-bathing. The number of vessels belonging to the port was, in 1857, 324. The number of ships that entered in 1855 was 501, and those that cleared 572. The total quantity, in cwt., of the exports and imports by sea, at Rostock, in 1852, is exhibited in the following table:

| Articles of consumption | Imported | Exported | |-------------------------|----------|----------| | | 10,678 | 790,068 | | Raw materials | 235,850 | 36,035 | | Half-manufactured goods | 22,941 | 71 | | Manufactured goods | 285 | 1 | | Works of art and industry | 12,808 | 452 |

Total: 381,333

The transit trade of the town amounted in the same year to 31,379 cwt. in all. The most part of the goods exported from Rostock go to England, Sweden, and Holland; and the imports come from these countries, and from Denmark. Rostock is a place of much antiquity. It was raised to the rank of a city in 1030, and at a later period became a member of the Hanseatic League, but left that confederacy in 1492. It still retains the right of coining money, along with several other privileges; and is the seat of an exchange and a bank for the duchy. Pop (1855) 24,228.