Deichstraße
Timber-framed merchant houses on a medieval canal, spared by fire winds and saved by a public vote.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Deichstrasse in Hamburg opens just after one in the morning on the fifth of May 1842, when a neighbor smelled smoke from a cigar factory on this street and a fire began that would burn for three and a half days, killing fifty-one people and destroying a third of Hamburg's old town. It follows how a shifting wind decided which buildings the flames reached and which timber-framed houses were left standing along the canal. Those same houses faced a second threat in 1972, when city planners wanted the row demolished to make way for traffic.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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