Wander & Wonder Travel Newsletter

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Most people fly over Hamburg on their way to Berlin.

They shouldn’t.

Hamburg is Germany’s second city and its biggest harbour - and it is built almost entirely on water.

Canals run between the houses, ships come right into the middle of town, and there are around 2,500 bridges: more than Venice, Amsterdam and London put together.

Autumn is a good time to see it.

The evenings get dark early, and that is when the city is at its best - the old warehouses are floodlit every night, and the reflections in the water can make it almost dreamlike.

Read on to learn about:

🪵 The city district standing on tree trunks

🎻 The concert hall that cost four times too much

🎸 The 503 hours that made the Beatles

New update: Many more languages 🌍

StoryHunt just became even more accessible around the world! 

The app interface is now available in 10 languages, making it easier than ever to explore, navigate and find your next story.

And the best part? All StoryHunt stories and tours can still be enjoyed in 170+ languages.

So wherever you’re from - or wherever you’re going - you can explore in a language that feels like home.

Destination of the Week

In 1883, Hamburg knocked down a whole neighbourhood.

More than 20,000 people lost their homes - and in their place the city built warehouses.

Not a few: a mile and a half of red brick, seven storeys high, with canals running between them so barges could unload straight into the buildings.

It is called the Speicherstadt, and it is the largest warehouse district in the world.

Here is the strange part.

There is no solid ground underneath it.

The whole thing stands on thousands of oak tree trunks hammered down into the mud.

Hamburg was once a major harbor city, and coffee, cocoa, spices - and at one point a third of the world’s carpets - passed through these streets.

Don't Miss

At the end of the harbour stands a brown brick warehouse from the 1960s - with a huge glass wave sitting on top of it.

That is the Elbphilharmonie, the city’s concert hall.

And building it was a disaster.

It was meant to cost around 240 million euros and open in 2010.

It ended up costing 866 million and opened in 2017.

For years it was the thing people in Hamburg complained about most.

Now it is the symbol of the city.

And the best bit is free: a long curved escalator carries you up to a public terrace that runs right around the building, 37 metres above the water.

Did You Know?

In 1960, five unknown young men from Liverpool took a job in Hamburg’s red-light district.

They were paid almost nothing and slept behind the screen of a cinema.

The following year they played 92 nights in a row at one club - 503 hours on stage, seven hours a night and eight at weekends.

By the time they went back to England, they were a different band.

John Lennon put it simply: "I might have been born in Liverpool, but I grew up in Hamburg."

They were The Beatles.

The Trendy Traveler Tip

Down by the piers there is a green-domed building that most visitors walk straight past.

Go in.

Inside is a lift big enough to swallow a car, and it takes you 24 metres down - to a tunnel running under the river.

The Old Elbe Tunnel opened in 1911 and was a sensation at the time.

It is 426 metres long and tiled from end to end, and if you look closely at the walls, you will find fish, crabs, eels – and a couple of rats (somebody’s joke).

Walk out the far side for the best view back at the harbour.