Hamburg Map

• In the Third Reich, Hamburg was a Gau from 1934 until 1945. During World War II Hamburg suffered a series of British air raids, which devastated much of the inhabited city as well as harbour areas. On July 23, 1943 a firestorm developed as a result of British firebombing and, coming from the Hauptbahnhof and quickly moving south-east, completely destroyed entire boroughs, such as Hammerbrook, Billbrook or Hamm-south. These densely populated working-class boroughs underwent a dramatic demographic change as a result as thousands of people perished in the flames. While some of the destroyed boroughs have been rebuilt as residential areas after the war, others such as Hammerbrook are nowadays purely commercial areas with almost no residential population. The raids, codenamed Operation Gomorrah by the RAF, killed about 40,000 civilians; the precise number is not known. About 1 million civilians were evacuated in the aftermath of the raids.

• At least 42,900 people are thought to have perished in the Neuengamme concentration camp (situated about 25 km outside the city in the marshlands), mostly due to epidemics and in the bombing of evacuation vessels at the end of the war.

• Hamburg has architecturally significant buildings in a wide range of styles. There are, however, only few skyscrapers. On the other hand, churches like St. Nicholas's church, the world's tallest building in the 19th century, are important landmarks. The skyline of Hamburg features the high spires of the principal churches (Hauptkirchen) St. Michael's Church (nicknamed “Michel"), St. Peter's Church, St. James's (St. Jacobi) and St. Catherine's Church covered with copper plates, and of course the Heinrich-Hertz-Turm, the once publicly accessible radio and television tower.

• The many streams, rivers and canals in Hamburg are crossed by over 2300 bridges, more than Amsterdam or Venice. Hamburg has more bridges inside its city limits than any other city in the world. The Köhlbrandbrücke, Freihafen Elbbrücken, and Lombardsbrücke and Kennedybrücke dividing Binnenalster from Aussenalster are important roadways.

• The town hall is a richly decorated Neo-Renaissance building finished in 1897. The tower is 112 metres (367 ft) high. Its façade, 111 m (364 ft) long, depicts the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, since Hamburg was, as a Free Imperial City, only under the sovereignty of the emperor. The Chilehaus, a brick stone office building built in 1922 and designed by architect Fritz Höger, is shaped like an ocean liner.

• Europe's largest inner-city development (as of 2008), the HafenCity, will house about 10,000 inhabitants and 15,000 workers. The plan includes designs by Rem Koolhaas and Renzo Piano. The Elbe Philharmonic Hall (Elbphilharmonie), expected to be completed by mid-2012, will house concerts in a building on top of an old warehouse, designed by the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron.

• The many parks of Hamburg are distributed over the whole city, which makes Hamburg a very verdant city. The biggest parks are the Stadtpark, the Ohlsdorf Cemetery and Planten un Blomen. The Stadtpark, Hamburg's "Central Park", has a great lawn and a huge water tower, which houses one of Europe's biggest planetaria. The park and its buildings were designed by Fritz Schumacher in the 1910s.

• Electricity for Hamburg and Northern Germany is provided by Vattenfall Europe, formerly the state-owned Hamburgische Electricitäts-Werke. Vattenfall Europe operates three nuclear power plants near Hamburg: Brokdorf Nuclear Power Plant, Brunsbüttel Nuclear Power Plant and Krümmel Nuclear Power Plant. All are scheduled to be taken out of service. There are also the coal-fired Wedel and Moorburg Power Stations, and the fuel-cell power plant in the HafenCity quarter. VERA Klärschlammverbrennung uses the biosolids of the Hamburg wastewater treatment plant; the Pumpspeicherwerk Geesthacht is a pump storage power plant and a biomass power station is Müllverwertung Borsigstraße.

• The school system is managed by the Ministry of Schools and Vocational Training (Behörde für Schule und Berufsbildung). The system had approximately 160,000 pupils in 245 primary schools and 195 secondary schools in 2006. There are 33 public libraries in Hamburg proper.

• Seventeen universities are located in Hamburg, with about 70,000 university students in total, including 9,000 resident aliens. Six universities are public, including the largest, the University of Hamburg with the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, the University of Music and Theatre, the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and the Hamburg University of Technology. Seven universities are private, like the Bucerius Law School. The city has also smaller private colleges and universities, including many religious and special-purpose institutions, such as the Helmut Schmidt University (formerly the University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg).