About this place
Standing on the Stadthausbrücke in Hamburg's Neustadt, this handsome complex of interconnected buildings looks like any other refined corner of the old city, home now to shops, a hotel, restaurants, and a quiet arcade. Yet from 1933 to 1943 it served as the headquarters of the Hamburg Gestapo and the criminal police, the command centre from which National Socialist terror was organised across the whole of northern Germany. Prisoners were held in cramped cellar cells and abused in the interrogation rooms above. After the war the crimes committed here were long forgotten, and the site's transformation into a commercial arcade sparked a bitter public dispute over how, and how prominently, the victims should be remembered. Since January 2020 a permanent exhibition, the Geschichtsort Stadthaus, tells that story.
Key facts
- 1933 year — The Gestapo took over the Stadthaus, turning it into the command centre of Nazi terror in northern Germany
- 260 officers — By 1944 the Hamburg Gestapo employed around this many people directing arrests and interrogations from here
- 50 square metres — The size of the memorial finally opened in the arcade, a fraction of the 750 the investor had promised
📍 Stadthausbrücke 8a, 20355, Hamburg