Speicherstadt

This guide to Hamburg's Speicherstadt traces how a rare duty-free privilege, nearly lost when Hamburg joined the German Empire in 1871, led the city to build this warehouse district on oak piles starting in 1881, displacing more than a thousand houses and twenty thousand people. It follows the Quartiersleute crews who weighed, dried and sorted coffee, tea and spice sacks hauled up from canal barges, and the district's one-time reign as the largest Oriental rug storehouse on earth. Listen for the old hoist hooks still fixed above the canal-facing doors.