Planten un Blomen

This guide to Planten un Blomen in Hamburg opens at the nightly water organ, ninety-five keys and ninety-nine jets rising thirty-six meters into the dark, then traces the ground beneath it back to sixteen sixteen, when the Senate hired Dutch engineer Johan van Valckenburgh to wall the city against the Thirty Years' War. You'll hear how those ramparts drained the treasury for decades without ever facing an enemy, and how three ticketed International Garden Shows in the nineteen fifties, sixties and seventies quietly paid to rebuild what stands here now. Stand at the water's edge for the evening show, free every night from May through September.