Hamburg

The smaller Binnenalster is the urban part, while the larger Außenalster is surrounded by green spaces and residential districts.

In the Middle Ages Hamburg belonged to the Hanseatic League and became a trans-shipment point between the North Sea and the Baltic. Later, goods such as coffee, cocoa, tea and sugar came into Germany through the port. The town hall on the Rathausmarkt (‘town hall square’), completed in 1897, is the seat of the Hamburgische Bürgerschaft, the parliament, and of the Senate, the state government: from the entrance hall (Rathausdiele) the way leads left to the Bürgerschaft and right to the Senate.

The Speicherstadt (‘warehouse district’) and the neighbouring Kontorhaus District (‘office-house district’) with Chilehaus belong to the UNESCO World Heritage. On a row of narrow Elbe islands stand warehouse blocks with historicist brick façades, connected by streets, Fleete (canals) and bridges. After the destruction of the Second World War, the warehouses were reconstructed, depending on the damage, and supplemented by a few new buildings. In the Kontorhaus District, large office buildings were built for port and trading companies; it came through the Second World War largely unscathed. Fritz Höger designed the Chilehaus in the style of Brick Expressionism, and its tapering east side recalls a ship’s bow.

In the HafenCity, the practice Herzog & de Meuron placed the glass superstructure of the Elbphilharmonie on a gutted brick quay warehouse. The façade consists in part of curved glass panels, some of which are cut open. The principal church of St Michael, the ‘Michel’ (a familiar short form of ‘Michael’), was destroyed by a fire in 1906 and rebuilt almost exactly to the plans of its predecessor, with tower and roof structure now of steel and concrete instead of wood. Damage from the Second World War was later repaired.

The city’s territory also includes the North Sea island of Neuwerk, a district of the Hamburg-Mitte borough, in the Hamburg Wadden Sea National Park. Since 2011 the national park has been part of the transboundary World Heritage Site Wadden Sea in Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark. In the green south-east lie the Vier- und Marschlande: meadows, half-timbered houses with thatched roofs behind the dike, fruit and vegetable growing, as well as the Dove Elbe and the Gose Elbe and Bracks, small ponds that formed after dike breaches. In historic churches such as St Johannis in Curslack and St Pankratius in Ochsenwerder you can find intarsia (inlaid woodwork).