Hamburg · DE
Hamburg Highlights: Bismarck to the Speicherstadt
From the granite giant above the Elbe to the red-brick canals of the Speicherstadt.
What's the walk about?
Welcome to Hamburg, Germany's great port city-state, where civic splendour meets the salt-tang of the sea. This walk begins beneath the colossal granite Bismarck Monument and leads you to the baroque Michel, the tiny bronze Zitronenjette, and Deichstraße, the city's oldest street. You'll stand beneath the ruined spire of St. Nikolai, admire the Rathaus and the Venetian-style Alsterarkaden, and pause on the quiet square where Hamburg was born — before the brick prow of the Chilehaus points you into the UNESCO-listed warehouse canals of the Speicherstadt.
What you'll see
-
1
Bismarck Monument
monument
The largest Bismarck monument in the world: a 34-metre granite colossus above the Elbe, carved as a medieval Roland knight and hiding a warren of wartime chambers inside its hollow plinth.
Read the full story → -
2
St. Michaelis (Michel)
Church
Hamburg's beloved baroque landmark church, crowned by a green copper tower that has guided sailors home up the Elbe for centuries. Locals simply call it the Michel.
Read the full story → -
3
Zitronenjette
statue
Hamburg's smallest and most beloved monument: the bronze statue of Henriette Müller, the tiny 19th-century lemon seller whose cry of "Zitroon! Zitroon!" once echoed through these streets.
Read the full story → -
4
Deichstraße
street
Hamburg's oldest surviving street, a row of merchant houses on the Nikolaifleet dating to the 17th-19th centuries, spared by a shift in the wind during the Great Fire of 1842 and by the bombs of the Second World War.
Read the full story → -
5
Mahnmal St. Nikolai
monument
The blackened, hollow spire of a bombed neo-Gothic church, kept as a ruin to stand as Hamburg's most solemn memorial against war. Once the tallest building on earth, it now shelters a viewing platform and a crypt museum beneath its broken walls.
Read the full story → -
6
Hamburg Rathaus
Landmark
Hamburg's opulent neo-Renaissance city hall, a defiant palace of the merchant republic rising above the bustling Rathausmarkt. Behind its emperor-lined facade sit 647 rooms and a hidden Italianate courtyard.
Read the full story → -
7
Alsterarkaden
arcades
Hamburg's answer to Venice: gleaming white arcades along the Kleine Alster, built after the Great Fire of 1842, with the city's pampered swans gliding past and hidden art nouveau frescoes in the Mellin-Passage.
Read the full story → -
8
Domplatz
square
The quiet green square where Hamburg began: site of the 9th-century Hammaburg fortress that gave the city its name, and of the vanished Mariendom cathedral, its footprint traced today by sweeping white benches.
Read the full story → -
9
Chilehaus
Landmark
A colossal wedge of dark brick that rears up like the prow of an ocean liner cutting through the heart of the city. This is Hamburg's boldest architectural statement, a UNESCO World Heritage masterpiece born from a fortune made in Chilean saltpetre.
Read the full story → -
10
Speicherstadt
landmark
A city of red-brick warehouses laced with narrow canals, the largest such complex in the world. Its neo-Gothic gables rise straight out of the water on a foundation of oak.
Read the full story →