The Speicherstadt, located in Hamburg (Germany) is the biggest complex of stores of the world. It possesses great historical value and occupies more than 26 hectares in the core of the Port of Hamburg. 17 buildings, with marked Gothic style of red brick, and more than 300,000 sqm are dedicated to area of storage. Some products of such high value as coffee, tea, cocoa, spices, obacco and, in the last decades, the oriental carpets, have been protected inside the building. Besides its strong architectural points, there are other places of interest such as Hamburg Dungeon, and Miniatur Wunderland Speicherstadtmuseum- the largest miniature railway in the world -make Speicherstadt has become one of the main tourist attractions in Hamburg and it has been added to the World Heritage List of Unesco.
Since 1920 to 1930 the first continental Europe business district was built and one of the first high-rise building under the cane of Fritz Schumacher. With the style of german expressionism, the Chilehaus was built with the remains of the bow of a boat.
Speicherstadt and Kontorhaus District with Chilehaus (Germany).- Speicherstadt and the adjacent Kontorhaus district are two densely built urban areas in the centre of the port city of Hamburg. Speicherstadt, originally developed on a group of narrow islands in the Elbe River between 1885 and 1927, was partly rebuilt from 1949 to 1967. It is one of the largest coherent historic ensembles of port warehouses in the world (300,000 m2). It includes 15 very large warehouse blocks as well as six ancillary buildings and a connecting network of short canals. Adjacent to the modernist Chilehaus office building, the Kontorhaus district is an area of over five hectares featuring six very large office complexes built from the 1920s to the 1940s to house port-related businesses. The complex exemplifies the effects of the rapid growth in international trade in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
