The hook
Germany's great port, a brick city of canals and warehouses where an old Hanseatic trading town meets a wave-shaped glass concert hall on top of a former cocoa store.
01Why it's worth it
Hamburg made its money from the sea, and it still feels like it: a working harbour on the Elbe, more bridges than Venice and Amsterdam by local reckoning, and the Speicherstadt, a whole district of tall red-brick warehouses standing on oak piles over the canals, once the largest warehouse complex of its kind. On its edge, the Elbphilharmonie concert hall rises out of an old warehouse as a glass wave, with a free public viewing terrace partway up. The city has a maritime, slightly northern reserve, but it also has the Reeperbahn, the red-light and music quarter where the Beatles cut their teeth in scruffy clubs before they were famous. Early on Sunday, the harbour fish market has run for centuries, half auction, half party for people who never went to bed. It rewards a walker who likes water and brick over headline sights.
02How to experience it
Walk the Speicherstadt canals and go up to the Elbphilharmonie's free plaza for the harbour view. Take a barge or ferry on the working harbour rather than a tourist cruise; the public ferry line does the job. If you can face it, roll up to the Sunday fish market at dawn.
The honest note
Germans steer visitors away from the obvious transport hubs and toward cities with actual character. On the one most travellers default to: "Frankfurt is a city that ends up on a lot of itineraries because of its status as a transportation hub and the fact that it's such a well-known name — it must be worth visiting, right? Frankfurt is perfectly pleasant, but overall quite dull from a tourist's perspective." Hamburg is the northern city that repays the time Frankfurt doesn't. Carry cash, and don't assume English outside the big cities.