City Information

The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, one of the 16 states of the federation, is the second largest city in Germany with its 1.7 million inhabitants. In this sense it is a city as well as a state. Hamburg is the nation's busiest port and its major industrial city.

It is also culturally and commercially the center of all of Northern Germany. The metropolitan region, seven times the size of Paris, consists of 3.5 million people and for all of them, Hamburg is the shopping and cultural metropolis. It enjoys the largest average personal living space of all big cities in the world. In fact, 14% of the city is made up of green and recreation areas.

Hamburg boasts 2302 bridges, more than the total of all bridges that Venice and Amsterdam have to offer. With more than 90 consulates, Hamburg ranks only second to New York as the city with the most consulates in the world.

Hamburg′s beginnings are not to be found along the Elbe River, rather at its tributary, the Alster River. Not far from where this minor tributary flowed into the Elbe, an initial settlement was founded along its banks (old Saxon: "ham") in the 8th century. Then around 950 A.D. the Hammaburg was established right here. An Inter-City-Network of the middle Ages was instituted and duly named the Hanse and Hamburg developed to become the most significant harbor of the Hanse. With the discovery of America it was to become one of the most significant ports of entry in Europe.

Hamburg today is an elegant, modern city and a cultural center, widely known for its opera, theaters, magazine and book-publishing houses, radio and television broadcasting centers, and film studios. At its center are two lakes, the Binnenalster (Inner Alster) and the Aussenalster (Outer Alster). The St. Pauli district, with its well-known street, the Reeperbahn, includes numerous places of entertainment. Hamburg is the seat of a university (founded 1919), several museums, and medical and technical institutes. There are extensive zoological and botanical gardens. Noteworthy buildings include the baroque St. Michael's Church (1750–62), rebuilt (1907–12) after a fire; the Church of St. Jacobi (begun in the 14th cent.); and the Renaissance-style city hall (1886–97). Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms were born in the city.

The Stadium

The approximately 51,000 all seater stadium in Hamburg opened on 2nd September, 2000 for the international between Germany and Greece.

The building process began in 1998.