Whether it's Miniatur Wunderland, the moated castle or the traditional ship harbor - a trip to the Speicherstadt is a must when visiting Hamburg. Since July 2015, the Speicherstadt, together with the Kontorhaus district including the Chilehaus, has been Germany's 40th UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Speicherstadt is the largest warehouse ensemble in the world and covers around 26 hectares between Baumwall and Oberhafen. The complex was built on thousands of oak piles between 1883 and the end of the 1920s and has been a listed building since 1991.
Today, the buildings in the Speicherstadt are home to leisure activities such as the Miniatur Wunderland, which is popular with young and old, and the Speicherstadt Museum, where you can learn about the history of today's World Heritage Site before exploring it for yourself. In the Hamburg Dungeon, you can take a spooky journey through Hamburg's history. The German Customs Museum, which traces the history of customs and smuggling, the International Maritime Museum with thousands of ship models and nautical charts, or the Prototype Car Museum with horsepower rarities from 70 years of automobile history are always worth a visit. During a visit to the coffee roastery, you can learn more about the world of the dark bean in a former original coffee warehouse and even taste freshly brewed coffee from different countries. There is also plenty to experience outside the old warehouses: Boats sail in the long canals between the rows of buildings and the traditional ship harbor in Sandtorhafen attracts visitors with up to 20 historic ships. When it opened in 1866, the Sandtorhafen was the first modern harbor basin in the city where ships could be loaded and unloaded directly at the quay.
By far one of the most popular photo motifs in the Speicherstadt is the moated castle at the end of the Dutch Brook, which is now used as a tea shop with restaurants. It forms the center of the third construction phase of the Speicherstadt and was built between 1905 and 1907. At the time, it was the only place in the Speicherstadt that was allowed to be inhabited. This regulation served on the one hand to prevent smuggling in the free port area, and on the other hand the Speicherstadt is not sufficiently protected in the event of a storm surge. Due to its exposed location, the Fleetschlösschen on Brooktorkai is also a popular photo motif. Over the course of time, it has been used as a customs building, fire station and public toilet, among other things. One of the better-known buildings in the Speicherstadt is the water police station on Kehrwiederspitze - the building, which was erected in 1902, is the location for the ZDF television series "Notruf Hafenkante". Last but not least, the "Speicherstadtrathaus", the main building of Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG, built between 1902 and 1904, is one of the eye-catchers in the Speicherstadt. The administrative building was built according to designs by Johannes Grotjan and the firm Hanßen & Meerwein, which also played a key role in the Hamburg City Hall.
History of the Speicherstadt
Hamburg joined the German Empire in 1871, but the city remained a customs exclusion zone. This privilege was to change with the Customs Connection Treaty agreed on May 25, 1881: The zone in which neither customs duties nor import turnover taxes had to be paid was restricted to the free port area. Hamburg's final annexation to the German Empire was planned for October 15, 1888 - leaving around seven years to create new storage capacities around the free port.
Before construction of the Kontorhäuser could begin in 1883, however, around 24,000 people had to leave their homes and around 1,100 houses had to be demolished. Alfred Lichtwark, former director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, coined the phrase "Free and Demolition City of Hamburg" during this time. Previously, simple houses for the poor had stood on the Kehrwieder and baroque luxury houses for the rich on the Wandrahm. The wealthier families converted their summer residences on the Alster and Elbe rivers into their main residences, while the people of the poor quarter were supposed to move to the newly built workers' quarters, for example in Barmbek and Hammerbrook. However, as the majority of people were dependent on work at the port and extensive means of transportation would not be introduced until the construction of the subway in 1912, the less affluent moved to the poor quarters of Südstadt.
On October 29, 1888, Kaiser Wilhelm II officially inaugurated the Speicherstadt on the so-called "Emperor's Day", but only the first construction phase was completed at this time. Interrupted by the First World War, the Speicherstadt was completed in 1927. Blocks Y and Z, for which the Ericusspitze site was intended, were no longer built. The western part of the Speicherstadt was destroyed during Operation Gomorrah in the Second World War, and reconstruction was completed in 1967. On January 1, 2013, an era in Hamburg finally came to an end: the free port, which made up around a fifth of Hamburg's port area, was dissolved.
