Speicherstadt
The historic warehouse district is home of a very special attraction: the "model railway inside the model railway”.
Towards the end of the 19th century, a new warehouse district, called "The Speicherstadt" was built south of the Zollkanal (Custom's Channel) on the Brookinsel for the free trade port of Hamburg.
The large storehouses, some of them up to seven floors high, form an impressive unity. They are made from brown brick stone and situated between the loading canals (called "Fleet") and streets. The warehouses served and still do serve primarily as storage space for valuable import merchandise such as tobacco, coffee, cocoa, tea, rum, dried fruits, nuts or spices, as well as for preserves, optical and electronic equipment, raw silk and oriental carpets.
Wunderland's Speicherstadt has been created by a technique named "kit bashing". This means that pieces, such as facades and roofs, are taken from various commercial kits and subsequently are cut, colored and put together to create the new scale model. Even the smallest oriel windows and sills were rebuilt manually. Following the original, one row of Wunderland’s historic warehouses is facing the Fleet, the other one the street with its bumpy cobblestone pavement. A special attraction is the “model railway inside the model railway”: The 4th floor of one of the storehouses contains the smallest train in the world (scale 1:9,000). It drives around merrily whenever a visitor pushes the action button.
In 2015, its 125th anniversary, Speicherstadt was award UNESCO World Heritage Site status.
