The world's largest contiguous warehouse complex stands on thousands of oak piles driven into the marshy bed of the Elbe. Construction began in 1883, after Hamburg joined the German Customs Union and needed a duty-free storage zone. More than 20,000 residents of the Kehrwieder and Wandrahm islands were displaced to make room. The first section opened in 1888; the last was completed in 1927. Neo-Gothic gables, glazed brick, iron winches and turrets gave commercial storage the silhouette of a cathedral quarter. What the buildings held mattered as much as how they looked. Coffee, tea, spices, tobacco and, above all, Oriental carpets moved through these floors, and Hamburg remains one of the largest carpet trading centres outside Asia. Quartiersleute — licensed warehousemen — hoisted sacks by rope and pulley through hatches that still punctuate the facades. A visitor on a speicherstadt tour english typically follows the Fleete, the tidal canals that let barges unload directly beneath the loading doors, twice a day rising and falling with the North Sea. War and water shaped the rest. Allied bombing in 1943 destroyed roughly half the district; reconstruction followed the original plans rather than replacing them, which is why the ensemble reads as one continuous work. In 2015, UNESCO inscribed Speicherstadt together with the Kontorhaus district and Chilehaus on the World Heritage list, citing an exceptional record of international trade architecture from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The free port status ended in 2013, and the warehouses now hold museums, agencies and studios instead of cargo. The district today is a public space rather than a monument behind glass. Entry costs 0 EUR — free entry to the district, with individual museums and tours charging separately — and the streets and bridges are open monday through sunday, 00:00–23:59, which is why an evening hamburg speicherstadt walking tour can trade daylight for the floodlighting installed by lighting designer Michael Batz. Across the Brooksfleet stand HafenCity and the Elbphilharmonie, Europe's largest inner-city development set against a glass wave on a 1960s cocoa warehouse. Miniatur Wunderland, the Speicherstadtmuseum and the Deutsches Zollmuseum occupy former storage floors. Guided speicherstadt tour english tours and boat routes both cover this ground, though a speicherstadt tour english read from the water shows the piles, the tidemarks and the brickwork the pavement hides. Address: Speicherstadt, 20457 Hamburg, Germany.