Elbe Tunnel

This guide to the Elbe Tunnel in Hamburg goes back to nineteen oh seven, when workers began digging two tubes twenty-four meters beneath the harbor floor using caisson construction, sealed chambers pressurized with compressed air to hold back the river. You'll hear what that pressure did to the roughly four thousand four hundred laborers who worked inside it, and about the ceramic fish, crabs and other creatures later set into the ceiling as a quiet joke at the Elbe's expense. Listen as you ride the original lifts down into the tube they once fought to keep dry.