Hamburg

Founded by Charlemagne in AD810, Hamburg is an historic city, still maintaining a beautiful centre of neo-Gothic red brick buildings, half-timbered houses and medieval relics. It is also a trendy city, home to many young professionals in banks and insurance companies. On the Hamburg skyline, skyscrapers and façades of steel and glass counterbalance the spires of old churches.

Hamburg is certainly a wealthy city, one of the richest in Europe, and from its earliest days its prosperity has depended on trade. In the mid-13th century Hamburg became a mercantile partner with the neighbouring city of Lübeck, a coalition that later developed into the Hanseatic League, a commercial union of influential North Sea and Baltic cities. But although Hamburg, like Munich, is a rich city it never flaunts its wealth. The Hanseatic style is to temper affluence with the art of understatement.

But Hamburg is also Hanseatic in its Weltoffenheit or openness to the outside world. People from 183 nations call Hamburg home. Hamburg is also said to be the most English of German cities. If it is raining in England, so say North Germans, the Hamburgers open their umbrellas.

Situated on the banks of the river Elbe, Hamburg is dominated by water, its 2,428 bridges, at least 1000 of which span water surpasses even Venice. The Alster Lake in the heart of the city, dotted with the white of sailboats and flanked by green parks, is its showpiece. The harbour, where ships and loading cranes throw up a geometrical pattern against the skyline, and the network of narrow canals dissecting the city define its nautical character. Every year about 13,000 ships come from all over the world, carrying everything from Costa Rican coffee to Australian wool.

Hamburg is also a city of parks. Over 6000 acres of green spaces provide oases of calm and natural beauty amidst the throb of city life. It is a media city, home to a large number of the country's principal newspapers and magazines, press agencies and public relations firms. It is a city of museums, with at least 45 museums and over 100 galleries. And it is a city with style.

Visitors to Hamburg should be prepared for inclement weather. As in England, there are many rainy days in this most English of cities - and the picture of Hamburg that remains in the mind's eye is that of a watercolour impression in blue: of an after-the-shower mist, the harbour and the Alster.