Hamburg has burned down twice and rebuilt itself both times. This route follows the city from its ninth-century ring-fort through medieval merchant churches, the 1842 Great Fire, the 1943 firestorm and the camps at Neuengamme.
Hamburg's birthplace: the Hammaburg ring-fort of AD 832 and the Mariendom, demolished in 1805. Pale concrete blocks in the park trace the cathedral's pillars, and the 1050 Bischofsturm foundations sit under glass nearby.
Hamburg's oldest parish church, first documented in 1195 and rebuilt after the 1842 Great Fire. The bronze lion-head door handle of 1342 is the city's oldest artwork; 544 steps climb the 132m spire.
Late-Gothic hall church begun in 1340, gutted in the 1944 raids and rebuilt brick by brick. Its treasure is the 1693 Arp Schnitger organ — 4,000 pipes and the largest surviving Baroque instrument in northern Europe.
The last surviving row of merchant houses from the 1600s and 1700s, gabled and timber-framed above the Nikolaifleet canal. The Great Fire of May 1842 broke out at number 42 and burned a third of Hamburg over three days.
The blackened 147m spire left standing after Operation Gomorrah, the July 1943 firestorm that killed around 34,000 people. A glass lift rides to a 76m platform; the crypt museum documents the raids and Coventry.
Neo-Renaissance seat of the Senate, completed in 1897 on some 4,000 oak piles with 647 rooms. Forty-five-minute guided tours cross the Emperor's Hall and Great Festival Hall for €7, with English departures several times daily.
Northern Germany's largest concentration camp, where over 100,000 people were imprisoned and at least 42,900 died between 1938 and 1945. The brickworks, clay-pit rails and House of Remembrance with its 20,000 names survive.
The largest Bismarck monument anywhere: 34 metres of granite raised in 1903-06 above the harbour, the chancellor carved as a Roland figure guarding Hanseatic trade. A wartime air-raid bunker still runs beneath the plinth.
Emigration halls rebuilt on the Veddel where shipping magnate Albert Ballin housed departing families from 1901. More than five million people left Hamburg for America between 1850 and 1939; passenger databases are free to search.
UNESCO-listed since 2015 alongside the Speicherstadt: 1920s Brick Expressionism built as offices for shipping clerks. Fritz Höger's Chilehaus of 1924 narrows to a ship's prow in 4.8 million dark clinker bricks.
The Michel, Hamburg's Baroque landmark of 1762, destroyed twice and rebuilt twice; its crypt holds 2,425 graves including C.P.E. Bach. Behind it the Krameramtsstuben of 1620 are the last courtyard of shopkeepers' widows' housing.
Around 20 working ships from 1880-1960 moored at the old pilots' village, from the 1933 steam icebreaker Stettin to Elbe sailing barges. The low captains' cottages line a footpath with no road behind them.