Alster Park

This guide to Alster Park in Hamburg begins with a bronze pair by sculptor Ursula Querner, Orpheus reaching for Eurydike, cast in 1958 to tell the old Greek myth of a musician who wins his wife back from the underworld only to lose her again. It turns to 2011, when thieves came for the metal rather than the myth, an ordinary theft that left the statue split apart on its plinth. The guide also traces how this whole stretch of shoreline became public land at all, after Hamburg's mayor forced through the expropriation of private waterfront gardens in 1950 to clear ground for the 1953 international garden show. In warmer months, look out toward the water for four more bronze figures balanced on buoys.