Explore Hamburg

A ten-storey office building in Hamburg's Kontorhaus District, designed by architect Fritz Höger and built from 1922 to 1924 for shipping magnate Henry B. Sloman. Built with 4.8 million dark bricks, its narrow eastern end is shaped like a ship's prow, an example of 1920s Brick Expressionism. It became part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015.

Chocoversum is a chocolate museum in Hamburg's Kontorhaus quarter, opposite the Speicherstadt and near the Chilehaus. Opened in December 2011, it offers a 90-minute guided tour covering cacao cultivation and chocolate production, ending with tastings of the finished product.

Dialoghaus Hamburg is an exhibition venue in the Speicherstadt, opened in 2000. It houses three experience-based exhibitions: Dialogue in the Dark, led by blind guides through pitch-black rooms; Dialogue in Silence, led by deaf guides; and Dialogue with Time, led by older guides. Each lets visitors swap roles and sense the world differently.

The seat of Hamburg's state government, built from 1886 to 1897 on Rathausmarkt square to a design led by architect Martin Haller after the previous city hall burned down in 1842. It houses the offices of the First Mayor and the meeting rooms of the Senate and Parliament, with free exhibitions shown in its entrance hall, the Rathausdiele.

Hamburger Kunsthalle is the art museum of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, one of the largest in Germany. It occupies three connected buildings dating from 1869, 1921 and 1997, between the Hauptbahnhof and the Alster lakes. Its collection spans seven centuries, from medieval North German painting to international contemporary art.

Bucerius Kunst Forum is an exhibition centre in Hamburg's city centre, next to the Rathaus. Founded in 2002 by the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius and named after Gerd Bucerius and his wife, it stages three to four temporary exhibitions a year developed with other museums and collections.

The ruined tower of a Gothic Revival church designed by George Gilbert Scott and completed in 1874, once the tallest building in the world. Allied bombing in 1943 destroyed the nave, leaving only the spire, the walls and the crypt standing as a war memorial. A glass lift installed in 2005 carries visitors to a platform 75.3 metres up the tower.

A private museum in a former warehouse in HafenCity, opened in 2008 to display Peter Tamm's collection of maritime material. Across nine floors it holds model ships, construction plans, uniforms, maritime art and more than a million photographs, totalling over 40,000 objects.

The world's largest warehouse district, built from 1883 to 1927 on timber-pile foundations in Hamburg's port. Its red-brick buildings line a network of canals and were built as a free customs zone for transferring goods. Speicherstadt and the neighbouring Kontorhaus District became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015.

Hamburg Dungeon is a themed walk-through attraction inside a former Speicherstadt warehouse. Built in 2000, it was the first Dungeon venue outside the United Kingdom, part of a chain that includes the London Dungeon and Berlin Dungeon. Costumed actors lead small groups through live scenes based on episodes from Hamburg's history.

The world's largest model railway, housed in a former Speicherstadt warehouse and opened in 2001. Its H0-scale layout includes more than 16,000 metres of track, scenes recreating Hamburg, the Alps, the USA and other regions, around 1,230 digital trains and a day-night lighting cycle.

Spicy's Gewürzmuseum is a privately run spice museum in Hamburg's Speicherstadt, housed in a warehouse at Am Sandtorkai. Founded in 1991 and based there since 1993, it describes itself as the first spice museum in the world. Visitors can see, smell and touch spices from around the globe, with an audio guide included.

One of Hamburg's five Lutheran main churches, known locally as the Michel, built between 1751 and 1786 to a design by Johann Leonhard Prey and Ernst Georg Sonnin after fire destroyed the previous building in 1750. Its 132-metre copper-clad Baroque spire has served as a landmark for ships on the Elbe. Visitors can reach a viewing platform in the tower and visit the crypt below.

The Elbphilharmonie is a concert hall in Hamburg's HafenCity district, on the Grasbrook peninsula by the Elbe. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, its wave-shaped glass structure rises above the brick Kaispeicher A warehouse built in 1963. It opened on 11 January 2017 and is the tallest inhabited building in Hamburg, at 108 metres.

A 47-hectare park in central Hamburg, laid out on the site of the city's former fortifications; the first tree, a plane, was planted there in 1821. The modern park dates from 1933 and includes the Old Botanical Garden, a Japanese garden, a large playground and seasonal water-light concerts.

Rickmer Rickmers is a three-masted iron barque built in 1896 at the Rickmers shipyard in Bremerhaven for the Hong Kong rice and bamboo trade. Renamed and reflagged several times over her career, including service as a Portuguese Navy training ship, she was bought back by the Hamburg group Windjammer für Hamburg in 1983 and restored as a floating museum moored on the Elbe.

Panoptikum Hamburg is Germany's oldest wax museum, founded in 1879 by woodcarver Friedrich Hermann Faerber on Spielbudenplatz near the Reeperbahn. Still family-run today, it displays wax figures of historical and contemporary public figures; each figure takes up to two years and tens of thousands of euros to produce.

The largest landing site in the Port of Hamburg, on the Elbe in the St. Pauli district, with piers built in 1907 as floating pontoons linked to land by ten movable bridges. The 688-metre complex was once the terminal for ocean liners and today is a hub for harbour ferries and sightseeing boats, with the Old Elbe Tunnel entrance at its western end.

A street in Hamburg's St. Pauli district and the centre of its nightlife and red-light district, nicknamed 'the sinful mile'. Its name comes from the ropewalks relocated here outside the old city walls in the 17th century, where rope was made for ships. Today it is lined with bars, clubs and theatres, and the annual Reeperbahn Festival takes place along it.

BallinStadt is a museum and memorial park on the Elbe in the Port of Hamburg, on the site of the Hamburg America Line's emigration halls, built in 1901. From the 1850s to the early 1930s, around five million emigrants passed through en route to the Americas. The halls were demolished in 1934, rebuilt true to the original, and opened as a museum in 2007.