Hamburg audio guide: the stories of its sights

The Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg was meant to cost 77 million euros.

In the end, it cost around 866 million. That is more than eleven times the plan. Imagine signing off on a budget like that, and watching it grow year after year. The concert hall opened in January 2017. People call it the Elphi, for short. It stands on the shell of the old Kaispeicher A, a quayside warehouse from 1963. Today it is the tallest inhabited building in Hamburg.

The plan was simple enough. The house was to be finished in 2010. But the date slipped, and then it slipped again, several times over. With every delay, the costs rose and the headlines grew. So the building became famous across Germany long before a single note was played inside it. Today, the story of the money is only part of the picture. At a height of 37 metres, there is a public square, open to everyone.

From there, the view reaches over the Norderelbe, the harbour, the HafenCity district and the city centre. It is a fine place to take in Hamburg, and to ponder what a building can be worth.

Hamburg once called itself a "Free and Demolition City", and the man who coined that phrase had the Speicherstadt in mind.

The Speicherstadt is the largest historic warehouse complex in the world, set in the port of Hamburg. It was built in three stages between 1883 and 1927. Since 2015 it has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage. But before a single warehouse went up, something had to give. On the Elbe islands of Kehrwieder and Wandrahm, people had been building homes since the 16th century.

Whole neighbourhoods had grown up there over generations. For the new warehouses, they were torn down. About 1,100 houses were levelled. Around 20,000 people were forced to move away. That was the moment when Alfred Lichtwark came up with his bitter phrase: the "Free and Demolition City of Hamburg". Today the Speicherstadt is a place full of surprises.

It is home to the Miniatur Wunderland, the largest model railway in the world, which has been here since 2000. There are also museums devoted to customs, to spices, and to the Speicherstadt itself.

Between the riverbed and the tunnel you are about to pass through, there was once just 3 metres of mud.

That was all that lay between the builders and the water of the Elbe. This is the Saint Pauli Elbtunnel, the Elbe Tunnel. It opened in 1911 and runs 426.5 metres under the Norderelbe. It links the Saint Pauli Landungsbrücken, the landing stages, with the island of Steinwerder. To keep the water out during construction, the workers used compressed air.

The extra pressure stopped the water from seeping in. But that air came at a price. Three workers died of caisson disease, and two more were killed in accidents. Doctors did what they could. After each shift, they sent the workers into a pressure chamber for 90 minutes. Today the tunnel has been a protected monument since 2003. It has even become a concert hall. There were four concerts here, with 144 musicians spread through both tubes.

They read their music in real time from tablets.

When Hamburg City Hall was blown up, it was not by enemies.

It was the city's own doing, in a desperate attempt to save itself. During the Great Fire, the old town hall was blasted apart to create a firebreak. The idea was to give the flames nothing to feed on. But the explosion only half worked. The flames found plenty of fuel in the rubble, and they spread across the gap. The city rebuilt, and the new Rathaus, the City Hall, is today the seat of the Bürgerschaft, the state parliament, and of the Senate of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.

It was built from 1886 to 1897 in the neo-Renaissance style, under the architect Martin Haller. Its tower rises 112 metres. High on that tower, a figure of a phoenix, made by the sculptor Aloys Denoth, recalls the fire. It rises from the flames, and beneath it runs a motto: RESURGAM. I shall rise again. Inside, in the Phönix-Saal, the Phoenix Hall, silver bars from the city's silver treasure are displayed, fused with the rubble of the fire.

Today the entrance hall, the Diele, is open to the public, and regular guided tours begin there, including some in foreign languages. In the great banquet hall, the Matthiae-Mahlzeit is held every year, said to be the oldest banquet in the world.