![]() ![]() At the top you'll enjoy a spectacular view down the Elbe toward the harbor and docks. From the main entrance of the 360-foot-tall, 360-foot-long structure, visitors ride a 90-yard-long escalator (dubbed the "Tube"). Elbphilharmonie Concert Hallįor visitors, the heart of the complex is the Plaza level, which connects the renovated old harbor warehouse below with the modern glass tower above. As with similarly ruined churches in Berlin and Coventry (in England), a stroll here, between the half-destroyed walls of a once-stunning church, is an evocative reminder of the horrors of war (ruins free to explore and always viewable). Its tower (open to visitors) and a few charred walls have been left as a ruin to commemorate those lost, and museum exhibits in the church cellar detail Hamburg's wartime destruction. The church was destroyed by the Operation Gomorrah firebombing in 1943. It was designed in Neo-Gothic style by British architect George Gilbert Scott, and for a brief time after its completion in 1874, it was the world's tallest church (at 483 feet its spire is still the fifth tallest in the world). ![]() Today there are still five towers…but only four churches. Nikolai)īefore the mid-20th century, downtown Hamburg's skyline had five main churches, each with a bold tower. While the building is called a "City Hall," Hamburg actually forms its own Land (state) within the Federal Republic of Germany, and the council that meets in the City Hall chambers is more like a state legislature (free to enter entrance hall and inner courtyard daily English-language tours available). Hamburg's impressive Rathaus, a mix of Historicist styles (from 1897), was designed to showcase the wealth and grandeur of turn-of-the-20th-century imperial Germany. ![]()
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