Germany's gateway to the world — the Speicherstadt warehouse district glows brick-red over canal water, the Elbphilharmonie concert hall is a wave of glass above the port, and the Reeperbahn is Europe's most notorious entertainment mile
Hamburg is Germany's second-largest city (1.9 million) and largest port, a city-state (Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg) on the Elbe River 100km inland from the North Sea. The Speicherstadt ('warehouse city'), 300,000 sq m of red-brick neo-Gothic warehouse buildings from 1888–1927 (UNESCO World Heritage with HafenCity since 2015), is now a design, media, and museum district. The Elbphilharmonie (2017, Herzog & de Meuron) rises from a converted cocoa warehouse, its undulating glass facade visible across the harbour; its grand hall acoustic design uses 10,000 individually shaped gypsum-fibre panels…
Hamburg was founded c. 810 CE by Charlemagne as a fortress and became an archbishopric to serve as a base for Christianising Scandinavia. The city joined the Hanseatic League in 1241 and over the next two centuries became one of the most powerful trading cities in northern Europe, exporting cloth and importing furs, amber, and cod. The Great Fire of Hamburg in 1842 destroyed one-third of the city; it was rebuilt in the 19th century in a style of Baroque revival (the 1842 Hamburg Rathaus is the largest city hall in Germany). Beatles formed from four Liverpool musicians who played 270 nights at…