Alfred-Wegener-Weg 5
20459 Hamburg
The large hotel offers a variety of function rooms on the top floors with a panoramic view over the harbour. It also has a roof garden and the famous "Tower Bar". Apart from catering, the hotel offers technical facilities for events.
The Portugiesenviertel (portuguese district) is located in the heart of the city, just between the Landungsbrücken and the Michel. The district got its name in the early sixties during a wave of immigration by Portuguese Harbour Workers which settled down in this area. Nowadays a lot of Portuguese restaurants, cafés and pastelarias are located in the district, especially the main street "Ditmar-Koel-Straße" is a popular place to go for tourists, but also a lot of employees working near to the district are coming here for lunch. In the last years the Portugiesenviertel became more and more a place-to-be and even if there aren't so many Portuguese living anymore, this place still feels like "Little Portugal" and has a special Mediterranean atmosphere.
The construction of the Landungsbrücken, the great piers for the passenger ships, was started in 1839. Like most of Hamburg´ s buildings for public transport, built around 1910, the piers were given an impressive facade. The massive square building seems rather archaic. Allegorical sculptures on either sides of the middle part of the building, restored between 1975 and 1976, depict the winds. The tower on the east side of the building has a water gauge for the Elbe. The pier, destroyed during the war, was rebuilt between 1953 and 1955. 688 metres in length, it is made of concrete and covered by a deck.
Near the quays where the ferries dock, the "Landungsbrücken", stands the building housing the entrance to the old tunnel which runs underneath the river Elbe. It was opened in 1911. The classicist style of the brown sandstone square building, with its cupola and tall windows, is reminiscent of the Pantheon in Rome. A much simpler version stands at the other end of the tunnel on island of Steinwerder where the docks are. Escalators, stairs and elevators (for vehicles) descend to two parallel-running tunnels which are 410 metres long. Hundreds of light bulbs on both sides are reflected in the tunnels" tiled walls decorated with maritime motifs.
