Speicherstadt, Hamburg

This is my favourite sight in Hamburg - well it is more a district of its own. The neo-gothic style building are still in use to house the trader’s treasures such as spices, carpets, coffee, tea and rum. You can do a very good guided tour through the 19th century storage houses when visiting the “Spice Museum”. Or you go on a “Hafenrundfahrt” (harbour cruise) with one of the “Barkassen” on offer along “Landungsbrücken”. They bring you inside the storage quarter wnd you have a special view of the channels and the houses all around.

Deichstraße (dyke street)
In 1842, there was a big fire in Hamburg that left 20,000 people homeless and destroyed many of the city's old Civil Houses. Dyke Street is a preserved slice of Hamburg's history and allows you to glimpse what it looked like before the fire.

This is a sizeable warehouse district. One side of the warehoses is on street level and the other side faces canals- thus allowing goods to arrive and depart by land or water and be transferred by either too.

The architecture of this buildings is quite beautiful and I strongly recommend one of the boat trips that passes through this area. I believe it is now also illuminated at night - though I have not seen this myself

Experience the unique SPEICHERSTADT (warehouse quarter) in the harbour area with its turn-of-the century warehouse palaces in neo-gothic and neo-Renaissance style where coffee, carpets and other goods are stored.
And don't miss the great SPICE MUSEUM located in one of them: I learned a lot here about the origin and effects of some common and not so common spices - and you can actually smell and taste them! They also offer teas flavoured with exotic spices.
If you like to you can also visit one of the carpet stores: of course, you can buy precious carpets here but you can also only look around - the friendly owners (mostly of Persian origin) will give you a nice welcome and offer you a cup of tea anyway.

Check out the SPEICHERSTADT WAREHOUSES. Built in 1885-1910, the structure has been kept the way it was. And believe it or not, these warehouses are still in use today - you can see them hauling goods. Free access.

Old warehouses which are still used as such today. Well some of them are, there are many offices around that area now as well. Nice brick built buildings, you can see them best from one of the little boats that cruise through the port. (Ask about the tide before leaving to make sure that the boat actually goes through the 'Speicherstadt'!)

(work in progress)

The dark side of Hamburg's past first hand. Here you can experience along a dimly paths, hamburg's back in time to the past's bloody epochs and terrible events, both natural and man-made.