Hagenbeck Zoo
Moated animal park pioneering bar-free enclosures, shadowed by the history of human exhibitions once staged alongside its creatures.
This guide to Hagenbeck Zoo in Hamburg opens in 1880 with an exhibit called Eskimos from Labrador, when impresario Carl Hagenbeck displayed a family recruited from Labrador, including the literate violinist Abraham Ulrikab, behind ropes for paying crowds. It follows the agent who brought them, the vaccinations nobody arranged, and the diary Abraham kept in his own language, the only surviving account written from inside one of these shows rather than outside it. The moated, bar-free enclosures around you today are Hagenbeck's proudest invention, opened decades later at this site. Stand at the moat's edge and look at how convincing that illusion of open space still is.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.