This guide follows a line from Hamburg's shopping streets down to the harbour: the Passage Kino on Mönckebergstraße, the Stadthaus with its memorial to the victims of the Nazi police, the Speicherstadtmuseum in the old warehouse district, the stone carpet on a HafenCity bridge and, at the end, the Elbphilharmonie. Together they cover five very different sides of the city, from cinema history and a painful past to the port that made Hamburg rich.
Passage Kino
On Mönckebergstraße, the main shopping street between the main station and the City Hall, the Passage Kino opened in 1913 and is one of Hamburg's oldest cinemas still showing films. The building was designed by Joachim Glüer, at a time when Mönckebergstraße itself was brand new: the street was cut through the old town in the early 20th century and named after the Hamburg mayor Johann Georg Mönckeberg. In 2009 the large chain that ran it closed it, but an independent operator restored the halls and reopened the cinema in 2010, and today it is known for its programme of art-house and international films. It is not a scavenger hunt stop, but the City Hall, where the route begins, is only a few minutes away.
- The foyer and the auditoriums, with restored early 20th-century details and an Art Deco feel.
Stadthaus
West of the City Hall, at Stadthausbrücke, the Stadthaus housed the headquarters of the Hamburg police from 1814 until July 1943. Under National Socialism, from 1933 to 1943, it was the centre of Nazi terror in Hamburg: the Gestapo and the criminal police for Hamburg and much of north-west Germany worked here, interrogations often involved abuse and torture, and the persecution of resistance fighters, Jews, Sinti and Roma and others was organised from this building.
Today the complex has shops, offices and a hotel, and the Stadthaus Remembrance Site, part of the Hamburg memorials foundation since 2022, tells this history with two exhibitions, one on the building's crimes and one on the people persecuted. It is not a scavenger hunt stop.
- The 'Seufzergang', the corridor of sighs over the Bleichenfleet canal, along which prisoners were led from the cells to interrogation, with an audio station playing the accounts of former prisoners.
Speicherstadtmuseum
The Speicherstadt, the warehouse district built on oak piles from 1883 onwards, is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site together with the neighbouring Kontorhaus district and the Chilehaus, inscribed in 2015. It was built when Hamburg joined the German customs union in 1888 and kept a free port, where goods could be stored without paying duty; thousands of people living in the old quarter on the site had to move out to make room. The Speicherstadtmuseum sits inside one of the old warehouses and shows how the district worked: how coffee, tea, cocoa, spices and rubber arrived, were checked, stored and sampled by the 'Quartiersleute', the specialist warehouse keepers. It is one of the stops of our Hamburg scavenger hunt.
- The sacks, crates, scales and tools that the warehouse workers used, in a real warehouse floor with wooden beams.
- The winches high on the warehouse fronts, used to hoist goods up from the barges on the canals.
Steinerner Orientteppich
On the Wilhelminenbrücke bridge, in front of the Körber Foundation at Kehrwieder, lies a 'carpet' that you walk over: the Stone Oriental Carpet by the artist Frank Raendchen. It reproduces motifs and symbols of Oriental rugs in about 1.5 tonnes of marble granules over a length of 27 metres, and stands for the values those rugs carry, such as hospitality and openness. The first version was laid in 2005, restored in 2011 and 2016, and replaced by a completely new one in 2019, with Hamburg residents invited to help lay it. It is a stop on the scavenger hunt.
- The patterns in the stone: borders, medallions and symbols borrowed from traditional carpets, best seen from the end of the bridge.
Elbphilharmonie
At the western tip of the HafenCity, the Elbphilharmonie opened on 11 January 2017, years later and at many times the cost originally planned. The Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron set a wave-shaped glass building on top of a brick warehouse from the 1960s, the Kaispeicher A, so the old and new parts can be seen clearly one above the other. The building is about 110 metres tall, and its Grand Hall seats around 2,100 people around a stage in the middle, under walls lined with thousands of individually shaped acoustic panels.
Between the warehouse and the glass part lies the Plaza, a public viewing platform about 37 metres up that runs all around the building, reached by a long curved escalator. The Elbphilharmonie is not a stop on the scavenger hunt, but it is a short walk from the route's last stops.
- The long curved escalator, the 'Tube', which carries you up through the old warehouse to the Plaza.
- The view from the Plaza over the harbour, the cranes and the river Elbe.
How to see them in one walk
Start at the Passage Kino on Mönckebergstraße and walk west past the City Hall to the Stadthaus and its remembrance site. From there, head south across the canals into the Speicherstadt for the Speicherstadtmuseum, then continue to Kehrwieder and walk over the stone carpet on the Wilhelminenbrücke. Finish at the Elbphilharmonie, ideally late in the afternoon, when the light over the harbour is at its best from the Plaza.
See Hamburg with World City Trail
Our Hamburg scavenger hunt turns the city into a game you play on your phone. The route links 10 stops, from the City Hall to the Hohe Brücke, and two of the places in this guide are among them: the Speicherstadtmuseum and the Steinerner Orientteppich. Along the way it also takes in St. Peter's, the Chilehaus, St. Nikolai, St. Catherine's and the International Maritime Museum.
If you prefer a different format, there is also a self-guided walking tour and an outdoor escape game in Hamburg.
Play the Hamburg scavenger hunt →
Take the self-guided walking tour of Hamburg →
Play the outdoor escape game in Hamburg →
Facts checked in October 2026.