Binnenalster

This guide to the Binnenalster in Hamburg traces the basin back to eleven ninety, when the city's millers first dammed the Alster river to power a watermill, a second dam in twelve thirty-five backing the current into the reservoir you see today. You'll hear how that unglamorous waterworks once supplied the old town's drinking water, why the central fountain does more than decorate a shallow twenty-hectare basin, and how a hard winter can turn it into an open-air ice rink. The guide also follows the wartime scheme to disguise this stretch of water from the air.