Hamburg has always been home to measurement. Generations of traders have scaled their goods and still do: formerly oriental spices in ounces, today containers in megatons.

That made Hamburg a rich city.

Yes, Hamburg is bourgeois but with a rebel heart. With HafenCity, Hamburg redraws its boundaries and makes the link between the port and the warehouses of Speicherstadt, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2015. Like hardly any other city, Hamburg combines contrasts as tradition and modernity or down-to-earthness and wanderlust. Between 1850 and 1934 about five million people travelled from Hamburg to the New World on steamships—hence the nickname “Gateway to the World”.

Hamburg still is Germany’s biggest port and its maritime spirit infuses the entire city: from architecture, to menus and the cry of gulls, you always know you’re near the water.

Enjoy Hamburg’s omnipresent cosmopolitanism: in the multicultural eateries, its countless serious, colorful or bizarre cultural events and on the world-famous Reeperbahn, which has developed from a red-light district into the hippest German entertainment mile. “Anyone who has never [...] taken a stroll along the Reeperbahn is a poor wretch”, says a German song. This much is certain: Germany’s second-largest city is unique. Discover it!