Hamburg

Twenty-five stops, inland from the water: the Speicherstadt and the Kontorhaus district with the Chilehaus, World Heritage since 5 July 2015, then the Elbphilharmonie, the Binnenalster and the city hall, the churches of St. Michaelis and St. Katharinen, the Kunsthalle, finally Hagenbeck zoo, Planten un Blomen and the Rote Flora.

On the Saalehafen lies a 30,000-square-metre site that Hamburg had to lease to Czechoslovakia in 1929 for 99 years: the Treaty of Versailles granted the landlocked state its own access to the sea. Czech river shipping used the Moldauhafen until 2002; the lease still stands, the tenant is now the Czech Republic, and it runs out in 2028.

The Speicherstadt rests on some 3.5 million timber piles; building it from 1883 meant demolishing about 1,100 houses and moving out 20,000 people. Fritz Höger built the Chilehaus in 1922–24 for Henry B. Sloman, whose fortune came from Chilean saltpetre. The Elbphilharmonie opened on 11 January 2017 at 866 million euros against a planned 77, set on Kaispeicher A of 1963; its plaza, 37 metres up, is free to enter. St. Nikolai, at 147.3 metres the tallest structure in the world from 1874 to 1877, burned out on 25 July 1943 during Operation Gomorrah and is now a memorial.