Hamburg

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It is a popular misconception that Hamburg is a coastal city. In fact, despite possessing Europe's second-busiest port, this "amphibious city" lies some 65 miles from the North Sea. Its long-standing image as a 'city without culture' is also something of a myth. When the poet Heine remarked that in Hamburg "the customs are English", he was referring to its no-nonsense mercantile ethos which dates back to the era of the Hanseatic League. Yet even in Heine's day the "celebrated philistinism" of the city fathers was balanced by a tradition of private philanthropy: Hamburg has long been a city of culture as well as commerce.Although the traumas of twentieth-century German history are never far from the surface, Hamburg has become an attractive city full of colour and contrast.a With a population of nearly two million it is one of the largest cities in the European Union not to enjoy the status of a national capital. Above all, as Germany's "gateway to the world", it is a cosmopolitan city, whose culture has been shaped by those passing through as much as by those who stayed. Matthew Jefferies explores a city-state boasting the highest per capita GDP in Germany, but where ostentatious displays of wealth are shunned; a place synonymous with fast food and beer, in which fine dining and luxury shopping abound; a city without palaces, castles or cathedrals, yet bursting with monuments and memorials. With nearly eight million overnight visitors each year, Hamburg is fast becoming one of Europe's most popular city-break destinations: it is a city well worth getting to know.

CITY OF WATER AND FIRE: the Elbe, the Alster, and more bridges (around 2,500) than Venice and Amsterdam combined; a city devastated by the "Great Fire" of 1842 and the Allied 'firestorm' of July 1943, but twice rebuilt anew.

CITY OF BRICK AND NEON: the Speicherstadt "warehouse city"; Fritz Hoger's expressionist Chilehaus; and Fritz Schumacher's vision of a "liveable metropolis"; St. Pauli, the Reeperbahn and the Beatles.

THE WORLD CITY: Hamburg's colonial past; embarkation point for millions of European migrants to the New World; and home to the "father of the modern zoo".