Pinnable

Hamburg is Germany’s second-largest city, and its seaport is the third-largest on the North Sea. Every year in May, its townspeople celebrate Hafengeburtstag, the port’s anniversary, to mark the day in 1189 that Emperor Frederick Barbarossa granted Hamburg the status of free imperial city and, probably even more important, tax-free access to the lower Elbe river. In 1241 Hamburg entered an alliance with the merchant city of Lübeck, and out of this grew an entire league of such cities, the Hanseatic League, which played a foundational role in Hamburg’s economic, political & cultural development, transforming it into a major European trading hub. This is reflected in the places suggested here for a visit: a great many of them are related to the city’s maritime past & present.

To start with there is the German Port Museum, which is a work in progress. Its new building should have opened last year but is now destined to open God-knows-when. The current museum in the Hansa Harbour is nice enough though, as is its main exhibit, the four-masted barque Peking from 1911, which was one of the last great cargo sailing ships that could still compete with steam and motor vessels in the early 20th century. Two other museum ships, both moored on the northern side of the Elbe, are Rickmer Rickmers, a barque from 1896, and Cap San Diego, a cargo steamer built in 1961. Jenisch House gives its visitors an idea of the grand lives led by the Hanseatic merchants, while the Museum of Work and the Warehouse District Museum show, among other things, how & where their workers worked, and Ballinstadt is dedicated to the people who had had enough and left for the New World. The German Customs Museum shows how the German state tries to make a few quid on duties despite Barbarossa’s promises, and lastly there is the IMMH, a maritime museum with an incredibly nice collection, short only of life-size ships.

But there is more to Hamburg than just maritime stuff. Its most important museum is the Hamburger Kunsthalle, which houses Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, the best-known German romantic painting, as well as Jan Massys’ Flora, which demonstrates that today’s sheer fashion trend is nothing new, Nana by Edouard Manet, scandalous as ever of course, Paula Modersohn-Becker’s intimate portrait of Clara Rilke-Westhoff, and Joseph Beuys’ felt suit (№ 58). Equally interesting, the Museum of Art & Design is one of Europe’s leading museums of applied arts, featuring a rich collection that includes artifacts from the ancient world to the present and encompasses 4,000 years of European, Islamic & Asian cultures. Other museums that are of special interest are the Deichtorhallen, a contemporary art gallery, and Ernst Barlach House, a small museum devoted to the sculptor & printmaker Ernst Barlach. Something to look forward to is the reopening of the Museum of Hamburg History, which is planned for 2028, but be aware that Hamburg has a history of prestigious building projects running over time & budget.

The Elbphilharmonie has become Hamburg’s foremost landmark since it opened in 2017 (seven years late, ten times over budget). Its public viewing platform, between the old warehouse & the modern glass structure above it, offers a 360° panorama of the city, the harbour & the docks. Further architectural highlights are St Michael’s Church, a baroque church noted for its five organs & its 82-m-high climbable tower, and Chile House and Sprinkenhof, two brick-expressionist office buildings, as well as the Old Elbe Tunnel, the river Elbe’s 426-m-long underpass. And finally, if you like trains, you will appreciate Miniatur Wunderland, the world’s largest model railway, which boasts a layout size of 1,694 m² and has over 1,200 trains running on some 16½ km of track.

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