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A free zone
It is the largest warehouse district in the world on timber piles
The Speicherstadt, the city of warehouses, is the largest warehouse district in the world where the buildings stand on timber-pile foundations of oak logs. It was built from 1883 to 1927 as a free zone, where goods could be transferred without paying customs.
Cleared
More than 20,000 people were moved to make room
In 1883, to clear space for the new port area, the demolition of the Kehrwieder and Wandrahm area began and more than 20,000 people needed to be relocated. The construction was completed before the start of World War I.
Red brick
Franz Andreas Meyer gave the warehouses a Neo-Gothic brick skin
The warehouses were built with different support structures, but Franz Andreas Meyer created a Neo-Gothic red-brick outer layer with little towers, alcoves and glazed terra cotta ornaments. The warehouses are multi-storey buildings with entrances from the water and from land.
Rebuilt
About half the buildings were lost in the war and the rest rebuilt by 1967
About half of the buildings were destroyed by bombing in Operation Gomorrah in World War II. The conservative rebuilding was finished in 1967. In 1991 the district was listed as a protected Hamburg heritage site, and on 5 July 2015 it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the Kontorhaus District.
Day 1, morning
Next is Miniatur Wunderland.
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The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Speicherstadt, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.