Bremen, officially the City Municipality of Bremen, serves as the capital of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, a two-city-state in northern Germany. Situated on both sides of the River Weser approximately sixty kilometers upstream from its mouth at Bremerhaven, it is completely surrounded by the state of Lower Saxony. As the largest city on the Weser and the third-largest in the Low German dialect area, it anchors the Northwest Metropolitan Region alongside Oldenburg and Bremerhaven.