Hamburg: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Hamburg is a port that happens to have a city attached, and two building projects explain it. In 1888 Hamburg joined the German customs union and lost its free-port status, so a bonded warehouse district was built on oak piles in the harbour — the Speicherstadt, the largest in the world, and twenty thousand people were cleared off the islands to make room. Thirty years later the shipping firms built themselves brick office blocks behind it. Both are now Unesco. Two and a half hours, and dusk is when the brick is worth seeing.
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A short history of Hamburg
In the 9th century the Hammaburg fortress was built here, and in the 830s the city became the seat of an archbishop. In the Middle Ages it was one of the most important cities of the Hanseatic League, and to this day its official name is the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. In May 1842 a great fire burned about a quarter of the city. In July 1943 the Allies bombed the city in Operation Gomorrah, and the firestorm killed about 35,000 people. In 1960 the Beatles played in clubs on the Reeperbahn, before they became famous. Today its port is one of the largest in Europe.
The ten best sights in Hamburg
1RathausmarktThe city hall has 647 rooms, six more than Buckingham Palace, and tours run hourly
2AlsterarkadenThe white arcade along the canal, free, and it is the one Venetian gesture in the city
3BinnenalsterThe inner lake, and the fountain in the middle runs from May to September
4AußenalsterThe outer lake; a circuit on foot is 7 kilometres and takes two hours
5JungfernstiegThe lakefront promenade, and the Alster ferries leave from the pier at the end
6MönckebergstraßeThe main shopping street, and the arcades off it are where the real shops are
7SpeicherstadtFree to walk, Unesco since 2015, and the light at dusk is the reason to come then
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8Wasserschloss
The small brick house in the middle of the canals, and it is a tea shop now
9PoggenmühlenbrückeFree, the photograph everyone takes of the Speicherstadt is taken from this bridge
10Speicherstadtmuseum6 euro, in a working warehouse floor, and it explains what the district actually did
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Hamburg →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Hamburg:
Free walking tours in Hamburg
The warehouse city and the brick
Hamburg is a port that happens to have a city attached, and two building projects explain it. In 1888 Hamburg joined the German customs union and lost its free-port status, so a bonded warehouse district was built on oak piles in the harbour — the Speicherstadt, the largest in the world, and twenty thousand people were cleared off the islands to make room. Thirty years later the shipping firms built themselves brick office blocks behind it. Both are now Unesco. Two and a half hours, and dusk is when the brick is worth seeing.
- Rathausmarkt · The city hall has six hundred and forty-seven rooms, six more than Buckingham Palace, and it stands on four thousand oak piles driven into marsh — the whole lower city is built this way. Hamburg has never had a king: it was a free imperial city and then a city-state, and the building says so, with merchants and no monarchs in the facade statues.
- St Nikolai Memorial · The tower was the tallest building in the world between 1874 and 1876, and the rest of the church was destroyed in the raids of July 1943 — Operation Gomorrah, which created a firestorm that killed about thirty-four thousand people in a week and burned out eight square miles. The city voted not to rebuild it and left the ruin standing as a memorial.
- Chilehaus · Built in 1924 for Henry Sloman, who made his fortune shipping saltpetre from Chile — hence the name. The architect Fritz Höger used four and a half million dark bricks and shaped the east corner like a ship’s prow, and the reason the whole quarter is brick is that the shipping companies wanted a material that was local, cheap after the hyperinflation, and unmistakably northern.
- Speicherstadt · Eight storeys of warehouse on oak piles, with no lifts in the original design — goods went up and down on external winches, which are still on every gable. What was stored here was not general cargo but the high-value goods that needed to sit in bond: coffee, tea, spices, tobacco and above all carpets. The world’s largest carpet store is still in one of these blocks.
- Wasserschloss · The small brick building standing alone where three canals meet looks like a folly and was not: it housed the winch operators and the night watchmen who maintained the hydraulic machinery of the whole district. It is a tea shop now, and the tea trade it sells into is the one that filled the warehouses around it.
- Elbphilharmonie · The brick base is a 1963 cocoa warehouse and the glass wave sits directly on it. It opened ten years late at eight hundred and sixty-six million euros against an initial estimate of seventy-seven, and the city nearly cancelled it twice. The hall inside is lined with ten thousand individually milled gypsum panels, each one a different shape, calculated so that sound disperses evenly.
St Pauli and the port
St Pauli was outside the city walls, which is why everything the city did not want ended up there: rope-makers, slaughterhouses, dance halls, and eventually the Reeperbahn. The port is the second largest in Europe and it is a working one, not a view — nine thousand ships a year. Two hours, and the two best times are six on a Sunday morning for the fish market and eleven at night for the street.
- Landungsbrücken · The floating pontoons rise and fall with a tidal range of about three and a half metres — the North Sea tide reaches a hundred kilometres up the Elbe to here, which is also why this inland city is a seaport at all. The ferry marked sixty-two is a public bus on water: the day transit ticket covers it and it goes down the harbour for nothing extra.
- Alter Elbtunnel · Opened in 1911 and four hundred and twenty-six metres long, twenty-four metres below the river, and the reason it exists is dock labour: thousands of men had to cross to the shipyards on the south bank every morning and the ferries could not carry them. Four lifts big enough for carts and later cars take you down, and they are the original machinery.
- Park Fiction · The neighbourhood designed this park itself in the nineties to stop office blocks being built on the last open ground with a harbour view. Residents ran a planning process in a shop front, submitted the result, and won — the palm trees are artificial and deliberately so, and the park was exhibited at Documenta as an artwork about who gets to decide.
- Reeperbahn · A Reeper was a rope-maker, and the street is long and straight because ropewalks had to be: a ship’s cable was laid out at full length to be twisted. The Beatles played here for two years from 1960, more than eight hundred times in clubs on this street and the Große Freiheit, and they have always said it is where they learned to play.
- Große Freiheit · The name means Great Freedom and it is literal: this street was in Altona, which belonged to Denmark, and Danish law granted freedom of trade and of religion — so Catholics, Mennonites and Jews could work here when they could not in Hamburg. The Catholic church halfway up the street is the oldest building on it.
- Fischmarkt · Running since 1703 and it starts at five on a Sunday morning — the hour exists because fishermen had to sell their catch before the church service began, and the market was always required to close when the bells rang. The auction hall beside it has a live band and beer from six, and the crowd is half people who got up early and half people who never went to bed.
The Alster and the quiet city
The lake in the middle of Hamburg is artificial. A miller dammed the Alster river in about 1190 to power his mill, and the result flooded the valley and gave the city a lake it has built around ever since — the rich side, as it happens, because the port and the smoke were downwind to the south. This walk is the other Hamburg: water, parks, villas and the best of the museums. Two and a half hours, or seven kilometres if you circle the whole outer lake.
- Jungfernstieg · The name means maidens’ walk, and it comes from the custom of families parading their unmarried daughters along it on Sundays. It was the first paved street in Germany, surfaced with asphalt in 1838, and the Alster ferries have left from the pier at its end since 1859.
- Alsterarkaden · Built after the Great Fire of 1842, which burned a quarter of the city over three days and left twenty thousand homeless. The rebuilding was the making of modern Hamburg: the architect Alexis de Chateauneuf designed these white arcades deliberately as an Italian gesture, and the city used the fire to widen streets and lay sewers.
- Außenalster · Rowing and sailing clubs line it and the water is busy from April, but the rule that shapes the whole view is a height limit: nothing on the banks may rise above the tree line, which is why a city of this size has a lake with no towers on it. The circuit is seven kilometres and locals run it as a standard distance.
- Kunsthalle · Three connected buildings and the single most reproduced painting in German art is here: Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, painted about 1818. The museum also holds the largest collection of his work outside Dresden, which happened because a Hamburg director bought them in the 1900s when Friedrich was deeply out of fashion.
- Planten un Blomen · The name is Low German for plants and flowers, and the park sits on the line of the old city ramparts — which is why it is a long curve rather than a square. From May to August there is a water-light concert at ten every night: fountains choreographed to music with coloured lamps underwater, a format invented here in 1953 and still running on the original pond.
- St Michaelis · The Michel is the sailors’ landmark — its tower is the first thing visible from the river and ships took their bearings from it. It has burned down twice, once from a lightning strike in 1750 and once in 1906 when a plumber’s blowtorch set the roof alight, and the current building is the third. The clock face is the largest in Germany at eight metres across.
Getting to Hamburg and getting around
- Hamburg Airport · 10 kilometres out, and the S1 train reaches the Hauptbahnhof in 25 minutes
- Hauptbahnhof · One of the busiest stations in Europe, and everything in the centre is walkable from it
- ZOB bus terminal · Beside the Hauptbahnhof, and the Flixbus lines to Berlin and Copenhagen run from here
- Landungsbrücken · The harbour piers; the 62 ferry is a public bus on water and the day ticket covers it
Cheap eats in Hamburg
Hamburg eats standing up at the water. The Fischbrötchen is the city’s whole lunch culture in one object: a bread roll with raw matjes herring, or pickled Bismarck herring, or fried fish, with raw onion and a slice of pickle, eaten at a kiosk facing the Elbe for four or five euros. And the Franzbrötchen exists nowhere else — a flattened cinnamon pastry, caramelised at the edges, invented here and still not really sold outside the city. Four to eight euros.
- Brücke 10 · About 6 euro, standing at the rail, and open from ten
- Fischmarkt · Free, Sunday 5 to 9.30, and 7 in winter
- Daniel Wischer · About 12 euro, fried fish since 1924, and the mustard sauce is the order
- Hobenköök · About 20 euro, in the Oberhafen quarter, and closed Monday
- Isemarkt · Free, Tuesday and Friday mornings, and it is the smartest market in town
- Großneumarkt · A square of small bars and a Wednesday and Saturday market, and it is a local square
- Schanzenstraße · Street food of every kind for under 15 euro, and it is busiest at midnight
- Altes Mädchen · About 20 euro, a brewery in the old Schanzen slaughterhouse yards, and the courtyard is the part
Museums in Hamburg
Hamburg’s museums are about three things, because the city only ever did three things: shipping, trade and emigration. Five million people left Europe through this port between 1850 and 1939, and the shipping line built them halls to wait in which are now a museum. The art collection is the exception and it is a serious one.
- Kunsthalle · 16 euro, three connected buildings, and three hours is realistic
- International Maritime Museum · 15 euro, nine floors in a warehouse, and the model collection is enormous
- BallinStadt · 15 euro, on Veddel island, and the passenger-list databases are searchable
- Miniatur Wunderland · 20 euro, book a time slot online or queue an hour
- Speicherstadtmuseum · 6 euro, a real warehouse floor with the sack trolleys and coffee samples
- Museum der Arbeit · 8 euro, in a rubber factory, and the letterpress workshop runs demonstrations
- Deichtorhallen · 14 euro, two 1911 market halls, and the photography wing is the stronger
- Cap San Diego · 9 euro, and cabins can be booked for the night
Nature and day trips near Hamburg
Hamburg has more bridges than Venice, Amsterdam and London put together — around two and a half thousand — because the city sits where the Alster and the Bille meet the Elbe on marshland. The tidal range here is three and a half metres a hundred kilometres from the sea, and the whole lower city is built on piles driven into mud. Water is not scenery here; it is the engineering problem the city was built to solve.
- Außenalster · Free, 7 kilometres round, and boats are rented from April
- Planten un Blomen · Free, and the water-light concert is at ten nightly from May to August
- Stadtpark · Free, 148 hectares, and the great lawn is a legal nude sunbathing area
- Ohlsdorf Cemetery · Free, two bus lines inside, and half a day to see any of it
- Elbstrand at Övelgönne · Free, no swimming, and the ships pass very close
- Blankenese · Free, about 5,000 steps on the slope, and there is no road through it
- Willkomm-Höft · Free, 19 kilometres out at Wedel, and the S1 goes there
- Hagenbeck Zoo · 25 euro, and the bar-less enclosure separated by a moat was invented here
Things to do in Hamburg with kids
- Miniatur Wunderland · 20 euro, the day-night cycle runs every 15 minutes, and book a slot
- Harbour ferry 62 · Covered by the transit day ticket, 45 minutes each way, and it beats the tour boats
- Alter Elbtunnel · Free on foot, 426 metres under the river, and the lifts are the fun part
- U-434 · 9 euro, a real submarine you walk through, and it is genuinely cramped
- Hagenbeck Zoo · 25 euro, no bars on the enclosures, and a tropical house for rainy days
- Planten un Blomen · Free, big playgrounds and a boating pond, and the light show at ten
- Hamburger Dom · Free entry, a funfair for a month three times a year, and fireworks on Friday
- Cap San Diego · 9 euro, climb all over a working cargo ship, and the bridge is open
Nightlife in Hamburg
The night splits into two districts that do not mix. St Pauli and the Reeperbahn are the loud one, going since the nineteenth century and now a mix of clubs, theatres and tourists. The Schanzenviertel a kilometre north is the other: bars in a gentrified left-wing quarter with the Rote Flora squat at its centre, occupied since 1989 and still contested. Hamburg has no closing time by law.
- Reeperbahn · Free to walk, busiest after eleven, and Herbertstraße is closed to women
- Große Freiheit · The club side street, and number 39 is where the Star-Club stood
- Spielbudenplatz · The square with the theatres, and Schmidts Tivoli has run variety here since 1988
- Schmidts Tivoli · Tickets from 30 euro, variety and musicals in German, and it sells out
- Schanzenviertel · Bars from 4 euro a beer, and it fills from ten
- Sternschanze · The station square and the streets off it, and this is where students drink
- Karolinenviertel · Quieter than the Schanze, small bars, and it closes earlier
- Portuguese quarter · About 20 euro, and the sardines are the summer order
Holy places in Hamburg
Hamburg has five Hauptkirchen — principal Lutheran churches — and their towers were the city’s skyline for four centuries, which is why the city still limits building heights near them. Two were destroyed in 1943 and the decisions about what to do with the ruins are the most interesting part: one was rebuilt, one was deliberately left broken.
- St Michaelis · 8 euro for the tower, a lift and 453 steps, and the crypt is separate
- St Nikolai Memorial · 6 euro for the lift, a deliberately unrestored ruin, and the crypt museum is below
- St Petri · Free, the oldest parish church in Hamburg, and 544 steps with no lift
- St Jacobi · Free, and the organ recitals are on Thursdays at noon
- St Katharinen · Free, beside the Speicherstadt, and the tower is clad in gold said to be pirate treasure
- Gängeviertel · Free, exhibitions and a bar, and opening hours are irregular
- Lübeck · 58 kilometres out, the Hanseatic capital, and the Marienkirche bells still lie smashed where they fell
- Lüneburg · 43 kilometres out, and its houses lean because a thousand years of salt mining hollowed the ground
Frequently asked questions about Hamburg
What is there to see in Hamburg?
The top sights in Hamburg are Rathausmarkt, Alsterarkaden and Binnenalster. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Hamburg?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Hamburg without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Hamburg?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Hamburg, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The warehouse city and the brick.
How do you get to Hamburg and get around?
The main ways are Hamburg Airport, Hauptbahnhof and ZOB bus terminal. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Hamburg, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Hamburg that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Hamburg for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.